Sunday, November 20, 2011

Consistency: Thesis & Antithesis

"[S]uch is the stuff that man is made of: in principle and in practice, in a right track and in a wrong one, the rarest of all human qualities is consistency."
— Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1781)

"Do I contradict myself?
Very well then....I contradict myself;
I am large....I contain multitudes."
— Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself" (1855)

Emerson, of course, is blunt about it in his own way, but I prefer Whitman's way of putting it.

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