“And took for truth the test of ridicule.”

"On Truth" in Damn! A Book of Calumny (1918), p. 53
1910s
Context: The final test of truth is ridicule. Very few dogmas have ever faced it and survived. Huxley laughed the devils out of the Gadarene swine. Not the laws of the United States but the mother-in-law joke brought the Mormons to surrender. Not the horror of it but the absurdity of it killed the doctrine of infant damnation. But the razor edge of ridicule is turned by the tough hide of truth. How loudly the barber-surgeons laughed at Huxley—and how vainly! What clown ever brought down the house like Galileo? Or Columbus? Or Darwin?... They are laughing at Nietzsche yet...

Source: A Dictionary of Thoughts, 1891, p. 497.

Voltaire, Foreign Review, (1829); compare: "How comes it to pass, then, that we appear such cowards in reasoning, and are so afraid to stand the test of ridicule?", Shaftesbury, Characteristics. A Letter concerning Enthusiasm, sect. 2.; "Truth, 't is supposed, may bear all lights; and one of those principal lights or natural mediums by which things are to be viewed in order to a thorough recognition is ridicule itself", Shaftesbury, Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour, sect. 1.; "'T was the saying of an ancient sage [Gorgias Leontinus, apud Aristotle's "Rhetoric," lib. iii. c. 18], that humour was the only test of gravity, and gravity of humour. For a subject which would not bear raillery was suspicious; and a jest which would not bear a serious examination was certainly false wit", ibid. sect. 5.
1820s, Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1827–1855)

Vol. 1, p. 11; "A Letter Concerning Enthusiasm".
Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (1711)

Annotated Drawings by Eugene J. Martin: 1977-1978

Trump pointed out that in 2017, there was no test for the coronavirus that emerged in 2019, as quoted by * Steve Benen
2020-08-03
Trump points to imagined 'manuals' to argue against virus tests
MSNBC
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/trump-points-imagined-manuals-argue-against-virus-tests-n1235815
2020, August 2020

"On Truth" in Damn! A Book of Calumny (1918), p. 53
1910s
Context: The final test of truth is ridicule. Very few dogmas have ever faced it and survived. Huxley laughed the devils out of the Gadarene swine. Not the laws of the United States but the mother-in-law joke brought the Mormons to surrender. Not the horror of it but the absurdity of it killed the doctrine of infant damnation. But the razor edge of ridicule is turned by the tough hide of truth. How loudly the barber-surgeons laughed at Huxley—and how vainly! What clown ever brought down the house like Galileo? Or Columbus? Or Darwin?... They are laughing at Nietzsche yet...

Speech to the Gay & Lesbian Leadership Council of the Democratic National Committee in New York City (June 2008), quoted in "Did Michelle say Barack born in Kenya?" http://www.wnd.com/2010/04/136769/ by Jerome R. Corsi, WND.com (5 April 2010). Michelle says Barack's Home country is Kenya https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBJihJBePcs (YouTube video)
2000s

Kulturphilosophie (1923), Vol. 2 : Civilization and Ethics
Context: It is the fate of every truth to be an object of ridicule when it is first acclaimed. It was once considered foolish to suppose that black men were really human beings and ought to be treated as such. What was once foolish has now become a recognized truth. Today it is considered as exaggeration to proclaim constant respect for every form of life as being the serious demand of a rational ethic. But the time is coming when people will be amazed that the human race existed so long before it recognized that thoughtless injury to life is incompatible with real ethics. Ethics is in its unqualified form extended responsibility to everything that has life.