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.
I'm only a beer teetotaler, not a champagne teetotaler; I don't like beer.
He had only one vanity; he thought he could give advice better than any other person.
Absurdity is what I like most in life, and there's humor in struggling in ignorance. If you saw a man repeatedly running into a wall until he was a bloody pulp, after a while it would make you laugh because it becomes absurd.
Once I put that wig on, I didn't say an intelligent thing for four months. My voice went up. I walked differently. I'd ask incredibly stupid questions.
Well, the most terrible fear that anybody should have is not war, is not a disease, not cancer or heart problems or food poisoning - it's a man or a woman without a sense of humor.
I never know when I am being funny, and the other way too. I don't think you can think about that. I don't think you can try to be funny. Some people are just funny.
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