Foolish Consistency

For what­ever rea­son I decided to go search­ing for the answer to a quote that was pretty pop­u­lar in USENET .sig­na­ture files when I was a kid (and still is, for all I know)…

The other ter­ror that scares us from self-trust is our con­sis­tency; a rev­er­ence for our past act or word because the eyes of oth­ers have no other data for com­put­ing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loth to dis­ap­point them.

That’s the lead-in to this oft-butchered mis­quote:

[A fool­ish] con­sis­tency is the hob­gob­lin of lit­tle minds[, adored by lit­tle states­men and philoso­phers and divines.] Emerson

In other words, Emerson is say­ing that peo­ple who refuse to admit they were wrong because they don’t want to appear incon­sis­tent (lit­er­ally “unpre­dictable” in Emerson, though I think adding “dis­hon­est” or “wishy-washy” to the possible-parses list isn’t that far a stretch) are haunted weak­lings and cowards.