My apologies for the shameful incoherence you may find regarding the above video clip
and the blog below.
--------------------------
- A foolish consistency is the
hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. 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 to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again,
though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — 'Ah, so you shall be
sure to be misunderstood.' — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood?
Pythagoras 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.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self
Reliance (1841).
- Consistency is contrary to nature,
contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead.
- Aldous
Huxley, "Wordsworth in the Tropics" in Do What You
Will (1929).
- Consistency is a virtue for trains:
what we want from a philosopher is insights, whether he comes by them
consistently or not.
- Stephen Vizinczey, "Good Faith
and Bad" in London Sunday Telegraph (4/21/1974);
reprinted in Truth and Lies in Literature (1986).
- Consistency is the last refuge of the
unimaginative.
- Oscar
Wilde, "The Relation of Dress to Art" in Pall Mall
Gazette (2/28/1885); reprinted in Aristotle at Afternoon
Tea:The Rare Oscar Wilde (1991).
- Consistency is the enemy of
enterprise, just as symmetry is the enemy of art.
- George Bernard Shaw, quoted by Michael
Holroyd in Bernard Shaw: The Lure of Fantasy (1991).
- The test of a first-rate intelligence
is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and
still retain the ability to function.
- F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The
Crack-Up" in Esquire (2/36).
- If a person never contradicts himself,
it must be that he says nothing.
- Miguel de Unamuno, quoted by Douglas R. Hofstadter in Godel, Escher, Bach (1979).
- Consistency requires you to be as
ignorant today as you were a year ago.
- Bernard Berenson, Notebook (1892).
- Of course I'm inconsistent!
Only logicians and
cretins are consistent!
- Tom
Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get The Blues (1976);
spoken by the character "The Chink".
- A silly ass … wrote a paper to prove
me inconsistent. … Inconsistency is the bugbear of fools! I wouldn't give
a damn for a fellow who couldn't change his mind with a change of
conditions.
- John
Arbuthnot "Jacky" Fisher, British Admiral and First Sea
Lord, in a letter to former Prime Minister Arthur Balfour (ndg); reported
in Arthur J. Marder, From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow: The
Royal Navy in the Fisher Era, 1904-1919. (1961-1965); quoted by
Robert K. Massie in Deadnought: Britain, Germany and the Comiing
of the Great War(1991).
- I have forced myself to contradict
myself in order to avoid conforming to my own tastes.
- Marchel Duchamp, quoted by Harriet
& Sidney Janis in "Marchel Duchamp: Anti-Artist" in View magazine
(3/21/45); reprinted in Robert Motherwell, Dada Painters and
Poets(1951).
- When my information changes,
I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?
- John Maynard Keynes, Reply to a criticism
during the Great Depression of having changed
his position on monetary policy, as quoted in "The Keynes
Centenary" by Paul
Samuelson, in The Economist Vol. 287 (1983), p. 19;
later in The Collected Scientific Papers of Paul Samuelson,
Volume 5 (1986), p. 275; also in "Understanding Political
Development: an Analytic Study" (1987) by Myron Weiner, Samuel P.
Huntington and Gabriel Abraham Almond, p. xxiv; this has also been
paraphrased as "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you
do, sir?"
-----------
incoherent
adjective
…inconsistent…
[Chambers Thesaurus (5th Edition) © Chambers Harrap
Publishers Ltd. 2015]
It has been my
great good fortune in life to have friends and acquaintances who have strongly disagreed
with me (though not consistently so). My writing of blogs (which
if nothing else have been great therapy for me) began when a co-worker and I
found ourselves repeatedly on opposite poles in political discussions. (http://www.wayneblogs.com/2012/08/a-statue-i-would-erect.html).
Just yesterday the leader of our weekly men’s
discussion group treated me to coffee and criticism. He explained that he and several others at our
last meeting objected to my incoherence . Perhaps for a moment my face
turned red. (There may be one
or two of my readers who during school days spilled their guts in a class essay only
to find it on return shatter-shot with the scarlet lettering “Incoherent" (a label with no further illuminating explanation totally useless other than as extant evidence of bully bludgeoning).
Gradually those of us so wounded may come to learn that it's best to leave passion and conviction aside and put in its place cold calculation and kiss-ass ideology however respectfully
translated. As the song says, little children
must be carefully taught.
Additionally, I
would like to mention that a multitude of rich blessings can require a little
patience. Has anyone not had the
experience of paced ideation development eventually unfolding to exquisite gifts from God? (Perhaps we should be less dogmatically certain of time and resource requirements for on-going thought processing--especially as that pertains to mental graphics.) I often thank God for the sometimes mean-spirited opposition that God
lovingly turns into blessings. As King
David wrote: You prepare a table before me in the presence
of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Psalm 23:5 NIV
