This site hosts newsletters, books, etc., written initially for shareholders of Leithner & Company Pty Ltd and subsequently for anybody who wants to read them. Underlying these materials is the premise (paraphrased from H.L. Mencken’s article “What I Believe,” The Forum, September 1930) that it’s better to believe truth than falsehood, to live free than as a slave, and vigorously to pursue knowledge than to idle in ignorance.
Pontius Pilate asked: “What is truth?” “Truth,” George Bernard Shaw reckoned, “is the only thing that [almost] nobody will believe.” The truth often hurts. Accordingly, the only question we must ask about any proposition is not whether it’s comforting – that is, authoritative, modern or popular. Instead, we must resolutely demand: is it true? “If you look for truth,” said C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity (1952), “you may find comfort in the end; [but] if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth, … and in the end [you will] despair.”
