Life & Wisdom Quote by H. L. Mencken

Mencken is doing what he does best: taking a wrecking ball to the pieties that pass for wisdom. The line reads like a defense of pessimism, but it’s really an attack on a particular kind of optimism: the comforting belief that if you dig hard enough, “truth” will reliably appear, clean and redeeming. Mencken’s twist is to treat truth not as a hidden treasure but as a marketing promise. In art and in public life, people announce they’re “seeking truth” when they’re often protecting a preference, a class interest, or a moral posture.

The intent is diagnostic. “Nine times out of ten” is crucial Mencken math: not a statistic, a sneer. It implies a world so flooded with cant and self-deception that the critic’s real job isn’t revelation, it’s debunking. That’s why “discovered” is passive and hopeful, while “exposed” is active and humiliating. Error has to be dragged into daylight, usually against its will.

The subtext is also a warning to artists and audiences who want art to function as a truth machine. Mencken suggests that art more often manufactures persuasive lies (sentimentality, moral simplifications, heroic myths) than it uncovers metaphysical reality. The critic, then, becomes less priest than prosecutor.

Context matters: Mencken’s early 20th-century America was thick with boosterism, moral crusades, and genteel cultural standards he loathed. His cynicism wasn’t quiet despair; it was a method. Strip away the fake verities and you might not find capital-T Truth, but you’ll at least clear the room of frauds.