Chase after the truth like all hell and you’ll free yourself, even though you never touch its coat tails.

The line urges an almost ferocious commitment to intellectual honesty: pursue truth with maximum intensity (“like all hell”), not because you can possess it fully, but because the pursuit itself is liberating. The image of never quite “touch[ing] its coat tails” suggests truth is asymptotic—always ahead of us, partly obscured by bias, limited evidence, or human fallibility. Yet the chase frees a person from dogma, self-deception, and secondhand certainty. In a Darrow-like spirit of skepticism, it elevates inquiry over final answers: moral and mental freedom come from relentless questioning, even when definitive certainty remains out of reach.