"Suppose you should contradict yourself; what then? It seems to be a rule of wisdom . . . to bring the past for judgment into the thousand-eyed present, and to live ever in a new day . . . A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin [boogeyman] of little minds . . . With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said today. - 'Ah, so you shall be misunderstood,' [someone will contend] - Is that so bad, then to be misunderstood? Pythagorus was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood . . . The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency. I hope in these days we have heard the last of conformity and consistency."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Photo: Aspens and the Ruby Range, near Crested Butte, CO, October 1, 2011
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