As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand.

Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw, 1818–1885) was a widely read American humorist and lecturer known for aphorisms written in a deliberately misspelled, folksy style. This quip belongs to the tradition of 19th‑century American newspaper and lecture-hall wit that used “common sense” paradoxes to satirize public morals. Billings often framed observations about human nature as marketplace metaphors, reflecting an era of rapid commercialization and mass print culture. The line’s sting comes from treating “truth” as a commodity: even when it exists, people may not want to “buy” it—an attitude Billings repeatedly mocked in his maxims and epigrams.

The saying turns a familiar lament—truth is rare—into a sharper indictment: the real shortage is not truth itself but the willingness to accept it. By casting truth in economic terms (“supply” and “demand”), Billings suggests that self-interest, comfort, and prejudice suppress demand for uncomfortable facts. The paradox implies that truth can be plentiful in principle (available to those who look), yet socially undervalued because it threatens vanity and settled opinion. As satire, it also critiques public discourse: societies may celebrate “truth” rhetorically while rewarding flattery, partisanship, or convenient fictions in practice.