The person you are most afraid to contradict is yourself.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (b. 1960) Lebanese-American essayist, statistician, risk analyst, aphorist
The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms, “Preludes” (2010)
(Source)
Quotations about:
inconsistency
Note not all quotations have been tagged, so Search may find additional quotes on this topic.
We must not suppose that, because a man is a rational animal, he will, therefore, always act rationally; or, because he has such or such a predominant passion, that he will act invariably and consequentially in the pursuit of it. No, we are complicated machines; and though we have one main spring that gives motion to the whole, we have an infinity of little wheels, which, in their turns, retard, precipitate, and sometimes stop that motion.
Lord Chesterfield (1694-1773) English statesman, wit [Philip Dormer Stanhope]
Letter to his son, #209 (19 Dec 1749)
(Source)
No philosopher ever yet — and there has been a great deal written upon the subject — defined a mere change of plan as vacillation.
[Nemo doctus umquam (multa autem de hoc genere scripta sunt) mutationem consili inconstantiam dixit esse.]
Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC) Roman orator, statesman, philosopher
Epistulae ad Atticum [Letters to Atticus], Book 16, Letter 7, sec. 3 (16.7.3) (44 BC) [tr. Shuckburgh (1900), # 780]
(Source)
Defending to his brother his change in plans, based on the changing political situation in Rome.
For quotation books, this is often given in a shorter form, without the parenthetical clause about much having been written on the subject (i.e., Nemo doctus unquam mutationem consilii inconstantiam dixit esse, or the shorter English translations below.)
(Source (Latin)). Alternate translations:No philosopher, much as has been written on this subject, has ever yet affirmed that a change of plans is the same as inconsistency.
[tr. Jeans (1880), # 117]No wise man ever called a change of plan inconsistency.
[ed. Harbottle (1906)]No well-informed person has declared a change of opinion to be inconstancy.
[ed. Benham (1907), 16.8]No philosopher ever called a change of plan inconsistency, though there has been a good deal written on the point.
[tr. Winstedt (Loeb) (1913)]Well, in all the many writings on this theme, no philosopher has ever equated a change of plan with lack of firmness.
[tr. Shackleton Bailey (1968)]
The United States brags about its political system, but the President says one thing during the election, something else when he takes office, something else at midterm and something else when he leaves.
Deng Xiaoping (1904-1997) Chinese revolutionary, politician, statesman [Teng Hsiao-p'ing]
Comment (1983)
(Source)
When asked by a group of American professors about China's political stability. Quoted in Philip West and Frans A. M. Alting von Geusau, The Pacific Rim and the Western World: Strategic, Economic, and Cultural Perspectives (1987).
‘Yes,’ I answered you last night;
‘No,’ this morning, sir, I say.
Colors seen by candle-light,
Will not look the same by day.Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) English poet
“The Lady’s ‘Yes'”, st. 1 (1844)
This imputation of inconsistency is one to which every sound politician and every honest thinker must sooner or later subject himself. The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinions.
James Russell Lowell (1819-1891) American diplomat, essayist, poet
“Abraham Lincoln” (1864), My Study Windows (1871)
(Source)
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,
Adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American essayist, lecturer, poet
“Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1841)
