Consistency Quotes

1. A consistent man believes in destiny, a capricious man in chance. - Benjamin Disraeli

2. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

3. Consistency is a virtue for trains: what we want from a philosopher is insights, whether he comes by them consistently or not. - Stephen Vizinczey

4. Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead. - Aldous Huxley

5. Consistency is the foundation of virtue. - Francis Bacon

6. Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative. - Oscar Wilde

7. Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago. - Bernard Berenson

8. Constancy is the complement of all other human virtues. - Giuseppe Mazzini

9. Constants aren’t. - John Peers

10. I pray to be like the ocean, with soft currents, maybe waves at times. More and more, I want the consistency rather than the highs and the lows. - Drew Barrymore

11. Inconsistency is the only thing in which men are consistent. - Horatio Smith

12. Let your character be kept up the very end, just as it began, and so be consistent. - Horace

13. Look to make your course regular, that men may know beforehand what they may expect. - Francis Bacon

14. No well-informed person has declared a change of opinion to be inconstancy. - Cicero

15. The constancy of the wise is only the talent of concealing the agitation of their hearts. - Francois de la Rochefoucauld

16. The secret to success is constancy of purpose. - Benjamin Disraeli

17. The world’s a scene of changes, and to be constant, in nature, is inconstancy. - Abraham Cowley

18. There are those who would misteach us that to stick in a rut is consistency, and a virtue, and that to climb out of the rut is inconsistency, and a vice. - Mark Twain 

19. There must be consistency in direction. - W. Edwards Deming

20. Too much consistency is as bad for the mind as for the body. - Aldous Huxley

21. We cannot remain consistent with the world save by growing inconsistent with our past selves.     - Havelock Ellis

22. What, then, is the true Gospel of consistency? Change. Who is the really consistent man? The man who changes. Since change is the law of his being, he cannot be consistent if he sticks in a rut. - Mark Twain

23. Whoever has no fixed opinions has no constant feelings. - Joseph Joubert

24. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do…. Speak what you think today in words as hard as cannon balls, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradicts everything you said today. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

25. Without consistency there is no moral strength. - Owen

26. You accuse a woman of wavering affections, but don’t blame her; she is just looking for a consistent man. - Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe 

For more quotes on various topics, see the archives listing for the years 2008-2009.