Deep within the heart of every evangelist lies the wreck of a car salesman.
Interpretation
This quote humorously suggests that beneath the passion of an evangelist, there may exist a more mundane and less admirable past.
H. L. Menckenβs quote highlights the idea that many individuals with fervent beliefs or strong convictions may have started from more commercial or less noble beginnings. By comparing evangelists to car salesmen, he implies that their passionate zeal might mask a history of persuasion and salesmanship, challenging the notion of purity in their motivations and beliefs.
In practice
This quote can be used during a discussion about the motivations behind religious or ideological leaders.
I know a good many men of great learning-that is, men born with an extraordinary eagerness and capacity to acquire knowledge. One and all, they tell me that they can't recall learning anything of any value in school. All that schoolmasters managed to accomplish with them was to test and determine the amount of knowledge that they had already acquired independently-and not infrequently the determination was made clumsily and inaccurately.
It takes a long while for a naturally trustful person to reconcile himself to the idea that after all God will not help him
It is the theory of all modern civilized governments that they protect and foster the liberty of the citizen; it is the practice of all of them to limit its exercise, and sometimes very narrowly.
The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.
The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.
It is my conviction that no normal man ever fell in love, within the ordinary meaning of the term, after the age of thirty.
Some marriages are made in heaven, Mine was made in Hong Kong, by the same people who make those little rubber pork chops they sell in the pet department at Kmart.
Maybe I'm just getting old, but I remember when your average NFL player would come to the sideline, spit out three bicuspids, Scotch-tape his humerus together and get back out there.
Right now I'm having amnesia and deja vu at the same time... I think I've forgotten this before.
Alcohol is a very necessary article. It enables Parliament to do things at eleven at night that no sane person would do at eleven in the morning.
In this desperate way, I started many a comedy.
Rats They fought the dogs and killed the cats, And bit the babies in the cradles, And ate the cheeses out of the vats, And licked the soup from the cook's own ladles. Split open the kegs of salted sprats, Made nests inside men's Sunday hats, And even spoiled the women's chats By drowning their speaking With shrieking and squeaking In fifty different sharps and flats.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.