Truth would quickly cease to be stranger than fiction, once we got as used to it.
Interpretation
Truth can be as surprising as fiction when we become accustomed to it.
H. L. Mencken's quote suggests that what we often consider as truth can become as surprising or implausible as fiction, depending on our understanding and acceptance of reality. It invites reflection on how we perceive truth and the narratives we create around it, emphasizing that our familiarity can sometimes dull our sense of wonder towards the genuine complexities of life.
In practice
In a discussion about the nature of reality and fiction, this quote can be invoked to illustrate how strange truths can appear.
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.
The more materialistic science becomes, the more angels shall I paint. Their wings are my protest in favor of the immortality of the soul.
...in the decline of life shame and grief are of short duration; whether it be that we bear easily what we have borne long; or that, finding ourselves in age less regarded, we less regard others; or, that we look with slight regard upon afflictions to which we know that the hand of death is about to put an end.
I am now convinced that theoretical physics is actually philosophy.
There is no ship now that can bear me hence
I believe in the complexity of the human story, and that there's no way you can tell that story in one way and say, 'this is it.' Always there will be someone who can tell it differently depending on where they are standing ... this is the way I think the world's stories should be told: from many different perspectives.
The essence of government is force, and most often that force is used to accomplish evil ends.
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