"the courage to treat falsehoods with the contempt they deserve"

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"idiots utter idiocies just as plum trees produce plums. . . . The problem is that some readers take them seriously."

     Simon Leys, of the Maoist Maria-Antonietta Macciocchi's On China, as quoted by Henri Astier, "In the age of sham and amnesia," Times literary supplement no. 5885 (January 15, 2016):  5 (5, 7).  The clause in the headline is Astier's.