People often claim to hunger for truth, but seldom like the taste when it's served up.

The line contrasts professed ideals with actual human behavior: many people say they want “truth” (honesty, facts, clarity), but recoil when truth arrives in a form that is uncomfortable, humiliating, or disruptive to cherished beliefs. The food metaphor (“hunger,” “taste,” “served up”) suggests that truth is not merely abstract; it is something one must ingest and live with, and it can be bitter. In Martin’s moral universe—where revelations often carry political and personal costs—the sentiment underscores how self-deception and selective hearing can be more attractive than candor, and how truth-tellers may be punished not for being wrong but for being unwelcome.