Quotes & Sayings About Inconsistency

Keith Gillespie just lacks a little bit of inconsistency. — Graeme Le Saux

Whether particular people with the capacity to take an objective point of view actually do take this objective viewpoint into account when they act will depend on the strength of their desire to avoid inconsistency between the way they reason publicly and the way they act. — Peter Singer

One blames politicians, not for inconsistency but for obstinacy. They are the interpreters, not the masters, of our fate. It is their job, in fact, to register the fact accompli. — John Maynard Keynes

Inconsistency itself breeds vitality. — Kenzo Tange

At bottom, the battle has been waged on moral grounds. The country has debated whether a society for which the dignity of the individual is the supreme value can, without a fundamental inconsistency, follow the practice of deliberately putting one of its members to death. — William J. Brennan

I would not be good with someone who did drugs. As long as I know something, I can deal with anything. I'm really good. But what I'm not good with is inconsistency. And I'm not good with not knowing. — Courteney Cox

But pure wit is akin to Puritanism; to the perfect and painful consciousness of the final fact in the universe. Very briefly, the man who sees the consistency in things is a wit - and a Calvinist. The man who sees the inconsistency in things is a humorist - and a Catholic. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Sometimes you've got to draw a line between having all the options and being a slave to the things, using them every time you play the guitar. I'm trying to keep a real inconsistency to the pedals so that it is something new every time. — Joshua Homme

Nothing that is not a real crime makes a man appear so contemptible and little in the eyes of the world as inconsistency, especially when it regards religion or party. In either of these cases, though a man perhaps does but his duty in changing his side, he not only makes himself hated by those he left, but is seldom heartily esteemed by those he comes over to. — Joseph Addison

A dispassionate conceptual development of the typology of violence must by definition ignore its traumatic impact. Yet there is a sense in which a cold analysis of violence somehow reproduces and participates in its horror. A distinction needs to be made, as well, between (factual) truth and truthfulness: what renders a report of a raped woman (or any other narrative of a trauma) truthful is its very factual unreliability, its confusion, its inconsistency. If the victim were able to report on her painful and humiliating experience in a clear manner, with all the data arranged in a consistent order, this very quality would make us suspicious of its truth. — Slavoj Zizek

Inconsistency has been overpraised by people who do not expect to suffer from it. — Mason Cooley

It has memory's ear
that can hear without
having to hear.
Like the gyroscope's fall,
truly unequivocal
because trued by regnant certainty,
it is a power of
strong enchantment. It
is like the dove-
neck animated by
sun; it is memory's eye;
it's conscientious inconsistency. — Marianne Moore

Most experts today subscribe to some variations of the incongruity theory, the idea that humor arises when people discover there's an inconsistency between what they expect to happen and what actually happens. Or, as seventeenth-century French philosopher Blaise Pascal put it when he first came up with the concept, "Nothing produces laughter more than a surprising disproportion between that which one expects and that which one sees. — Joel Warner

Well, my insane inconsistency had its reward. Instead of the comfort, the certain satisfaction, I might have won - could I but have put choking panic down, and stood for two minutes - here was dead blank, dark doubt and drear suspense.
I took my wages to my pillow, and passed the night counting them. — Charlotte Bronte

We send one species to the butcher and give our love and kindness to another apparently for no reason other than because it's the way things are. When our attitudes and behaviors toward animals are so inconsistent, and this inconsistency is so unexamined, we can safely say we have been fed absurdities. — Melanie Joy

I ought not to doubt the steadiness of your affection. Yet such is the inconsistency of real love, that it is always awake to suspicion, however unreasonable; always requiring new assurances from the object of its interest, and thus it is, that i always feel revived, as by a new convinction, when your words tell me I am dear to you; and wanting these, I relapse into doubt and often into despondency. — Ann Radcliffe

Psychologists should bethink themselves before putting down the instinct of self-preservation as the cardinal instinct of an organic being. A living thing seeks above all to DISCHARGE its strength - life itself is WILL TO POWER; self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent RESULTS thereof. In short, here, as everywhere else, let us beware of SUPERFLUOUS teleological principles! - one of which is the instinct of self-preservation (we owe it to Spinoza's inconsistency). — Friedrich Nietzsche

But they never notice the following inconsistency: this so-called worst-case event, when it happened, exceeded the worst case at the time. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The more I see the world, most dislike, and the time confirms my belief in the inconsistency of human nature and how little can one trust the appearances of goodness or intelligence — Jane Austen

In all its myriad manifestations, the language of anti-Semitism through the ages is a dictionary of non-sequiturs and antonyms, a thesaurus of illogic and inconsistency. — Paul Johnson

As far as consistency of thought goes, I prefer inconsistency. — John Cage

implies that there can be short intervals of inconsistency among the replicated nodes during which the data gets updated among these nodes. In other words, the replicas are updated asynchronously. — C.Y. Kan

There is no inconsistency in saying that God rewards good works, provided we understand that nevertheless men obtain eternal life gratuitously. — John Calvin

I can't count the times that upon telling someone I am vegetarian, he or she responded by pointing out an inconsistency in my lifestyle or trying to find a flaw in an argument I never made. (I have often felt that my vegetarianism matters more to such people than it does to me.) — Jonathan Safran Foer

However much faith to obey God we now have, we will need to strengthen it continually and keep it refreshed constantly. We can do that by deciding now to be more quick to obey and more determined to endure. Learning to start early and to be steady are the keys to spiritual preparation. Procrastination and inconsistency are its mortal enemies. — Henry B. Eyring

By inconsistency and frivolity we stray from the Way and show ourselves to be beginners. In this we do much harm. — Yamamoto Tsunetomo

The person who understands the evil in his own heart is the only person who is useful, fruitful, and solid in his beliefs and obedience. Others only delude themselves and thus upset families, churches, and all other relationships. In their self-pride and judgment of others, they show great inconsistency. — John Owen

A quick glance at the American left reveals a movement in the midst of a nervous breakdown, displaying behavior that goes beyond inconsistency into the realm of bipolar moods and multiple personality disorders. — Michael Medved

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

Today, we are announcing that agencies are releasing their final regulatory reform plans, including hundreds of initiatives that will reduce costs, simplify the system, and eliminate redundancy and inconsistency. — Cass Sunstein

There is no lapse in His character or inconsistency in His nature. Our God is everything he says He is ... for now and all eternity. — Matt Redman

A barbarous practice, the inconsistency, folly, and injury of which no words can sufficiently describe.

[Condemning the use of mercurial medicines.] — Thomas Graham

Inconsistency is the only thing in which men are consistent. — Horace Smith

Listen: you are not yourself, you are crowds of others, you are as leaky a vessel as was ever made, you have spent vast amounts of your life as someone else, as people who died long ago, as people who never lived, as strangers you never met. The usual I we are given has all the tidy containment of the kind of character the realist novel specializes in and none of the porousness of our every waking moment, the loose threads, the strange dreams, the forgettings and misrememberings, the portions of a life lived through others' stories, the incoherence and inconsistency, the pantheon of dei ex machina and the companionability of ghosts. There are other ways of telling. — Rebecca Solnit

I trust there are none here present, who profess to be followers of Christ who do not also practice prayer in their families. We may have no positive commandment for it, but we believe that it is so much in accord with the genius and spirit of the gospel, and that it is so commended by the example of the saints, that the neglect thereof is a strange inconsistency. — Charles Spurgeon

Hard to trust honesty of inconsistent person. — Toba Beta

Do not be proud of your inconsistency. It is a pity, it is a pity that we should be equipped like this. It is a pity that Man cannot be at the same time impressive and truthful. — E. M. Forster

Sometimes we forge our own principles and sometimes we accept others' principles, or holistic packages of principles, such as religion and legal systems. While it isn't necessarily a bad thing to use others' principles - it's difficult to come up with your own, and often much wisdom has gone into those already created - adopting pre-packaged principles without much thought exposes you to the risk of inconsistency with your true values. — Ray Dalio

It now becomes clear that consistency is not a property of a formal system per se, but depends on the interpretation which is proposed for it. By the same token, inconsistency is not an intrinsic property of any formal system. — Douglas R. Hofstadter

Absolute atheism starts in an act of faith in reverse gear and is a full-blown religious commitment. Here we have the first internal inconsistency of contemporary atheism: it proclaims that all religion must necessarily vanish away, and it is itself a religious phenomenon. — Jacques Maritain

Inconsistency is a great door for the change and for the progression! Never hesitate to be inconsistent! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

A widespread meticulous consistency causes a bigger suspicion than the most obvious inconsistency does! — Pawan Mishra

My aim is not to be consistent with my previous statements on a given question, but to be consistent with truth as it may present itself to me at a given moment. The result has been that I have grown from truth to truth. — Mahatma Gandhi

Self-organizing teams form the core of APM. They blend freedom and responsibility, flexibility and structure. In the face of inconsistency and ambiguity, the teams strive to consistently deliver on the product vision within the project constraints. Accomplishing this requires teams with a self-organizing structure and self-disciplined individual team members. Building this kind of team is the core of an agile project leader's job. — Jim Highsmith

But there are times when men have serious thoughts, and it is at such times, when they begin to think, that they begin to doubt the truth of the Christian religion; and well they may, for it is too fanciful and too full of conjecture, inconsistency, improbability and irrationality, to afford consolation to the thoughtful man. His reason revolts against his creed. He sees that none of its articles are proved, or can be proved. — Thomas Paine

Mutability of temper and inconsistency with ourselves is the greatest weakness of human nature. — Joseph Addison

They would know that inconsistency in human decision can make nonsense of the best-planned espionage approach; that cheats, liars and criminals may resist every blandishment while respectable gentlemen have been moved to appalling treasons by watery cabbage in a Departmental canteen. — John Le Carre

How often have you and I helped to keep sinners easy in their sin, by our inconsistency! Had we been true Christians, the wicked man would often have been pricked to the heart, and his conscience would have convicted him. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

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 Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher

Having, then, once introduced an element of inconsistency into his system, he was far too consistent not to be inconsistent consistently, and he lapsed ere long into an amiable indifferentism which to outward appearance differed but little from the indifferentism ... — Samuel Butler

I'm not a fan of inconsistency. — Colleen Hoover

But I just needed her so much and it never felt like enough and she wasn't consistent and her inconsistency and my insecurity were this horrible match for each other, but I still loved her, because all of me was wrapped up in her, because I'd put all my eggs in someone else's basket, and in the end, after 343 days, I was left with an empty basket and this gnawing endless hole in my gut, but then now I find myself deciding to remember her as a good person with whom I had some good times until we, both of us, got ourselves into an ineradicably bad situation. — John Green

One cannot live without inconsistency. — Carl Jung

Although a child's brain has reached 90 percent of its full size by age six, it's far from fully developed, and there are specific parts of the brain that have the furthest to go. It is the newest brain region, the prefrontal cortex, responsible for executive functioning - including voluntary attention and metacognition - that still has years of growth ahead. Your child's behavior will be marked by impulsiveness and inconsistency for quite some time to come. — Anonymous

Only when you give up being consistent will you find the truth! Inconsistency makes you free to discover other roads. — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Inconsistency, incompetence, and lies are all cut short by the ground. It will stop you if you can't stop yourself. — Mark Twight

Nature is full for us of seeming inconsistencies and glad surprises. — Margaret E. Barber

If they say I am inconsistent let them say it, for it is true, because inconsistency is a part of living — Errol Flynn

Nothing that isn't a real crime makes a man appear so contemptible and little in the eyes of the world as inconsistency. — Joseph Addison

An effective tsar could be harsh provided he was consistently harsh. Rulers are often killed not for brutality but for inconsistency. And tsars had to inspire trust and respect among their courtiers but sacred reverence among the peasantry, 90 per cent of their subjects, who saw them as "Little Fathers." They were expected to be severe to their officials but benign to their peasant "children": "the tsar is good," peasants said, "the nobles are wicked. — Simon Sebag Montefiore

Several elements of the ADD mind favor creativity ... As mentioned earlier, the term 'attention deficit' is a misnomer. It is a matter of attention inconsistency. While it is true that the ADD mind wanders when not engaged, it is also the case that the ADD mind fastens on to its subject fiercely when it is engaged. A child with ADD may sit for hours meticulously putting together a model airplane. — Edward Hallowell

One cannot fail to notice the inconsistency of those rejecting human rights: their rejection takes place in the public square created by human rights. It is difficult to reject human rights without using them. — Filip Spagnoli

Prayer makes tremendous power available (James 5:16). Don't let your prayer life reflect weeds of inconsistency or neglect. — Joyce Meyer

All of us should show humility, respect, and consistency. Humility, by admitting that nobody, no civilization or nation, holds a monopoly on universals and on the good, and that our political and social systems are not perfect; respect toward others because we should be convinced that their richness and achievements can be beneficial to us; and last consistency, because the other's presence acts like a mirror in which we should confront our own contradictions and inconsistency in the concrete, day-to-day implementation of our noblest values. — Tariq Ramadan

In practice, such trifles as contradictions in principle are easily set aside; the faculty of ignoring them makes the practical man. — Henry Adams

The signature of mediocrity is not an unwillingness to change. The signature of mediocrity is inconsistency. — James C. Collins

The writer who's afraid to contradict himself will never write anything. — Marty Rubin

The tyranny of Harvard and Yale is another thing that transcends this problem of the set point. But what's so striking about [Louis] Brandeis is he had this vision of cultural pluralism that completely gave the lie to the idea that there was any inconsistency between being Jewish or being a woman or being African American and being fully American. — Jeffrey Rosen

Homer was wrong," wrote Heracleitus of Ephesus. "Homer was wrong in saying: 'Would that strife might perish from among gods and men!' He did not see that he was praying for the destruction of the universe; for if his prayer were heard, all things would pass away." These are the words on which the superhumanists should meditate. Aspiring toward a consistent perfection, they are aspiring toward annihilation. The Hindus had the wit to see and the courage to proclaim the fact; Nirvana, the goal of their striving, is nothingness. Wherever life exists, there also is inconsistency, division, strife. — Aldous Huxley

The point of self-reflection is, foremost, to clarify and to find honesty. Self-reflection is the way to throw self-lies out and face the truth - however painful it might be to admit that you were wrong. We seek consistency in ourselves, and so when we are faced with inconsistency, we struggle to deny. Denial has no place in self-reflection, and so it is incumbent upon a person to admit his errors, to embrace them and to move along in a more positive direction. We can fool ourselves for all sorts of reasons. Mostly for the sake of our ego, of course, but sometimes, I now understand, because we are afraid. For sometimes we are afraid to hope, because hope breeds expectation, and expectation can lead to disappointment. And — R.A. Salvatore

We are all lumps, and of so various and inform a contexture, that every piece plays, every moment, its own game, and there is as much difference betwixt us and ourselves as betwixt us and others. — Michel De Montaigne

The intensity of her religious disposition, the coercion it exercised over her life, was but one aspect of a nature altogether ardent, theoretic, and intellectually consequent: and with such a nature struggling in the bands of a narrow teaching, hemmed in by a social life which seemed nothing but a labyrinth of petty courses, a walled-in maze of small paths that led no whither, the outcome was sure to strike others as at once exaggeration and inconsistency. The thing which seemed to her best, she wanted to justify by the completest knowledge; and not to live in a pretended admission of rules which were never acted on. Into this soul-hunger as yet all her youthful passion was poured; the union which attracted her was one that would deliver her from her girlish subjection to her own ignorance, and give her the freedom of voluntary submission to a guide who would take her along the grandest path. — George Eliot

There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or sense. — Jane Austen

One of hallmarks of a creative person is the ability to tolerate ambiguity, dissonance, inconsistency, things out of place. But one of the rules of a well-run corporation is that surprise is to be minimized. Yet if this rule were applied to the creative process, nothing worth reading would get written, nothing worth seeing would get painted, nothing worth living with and using would ever get designed. — Ralph Caplan

Turning off the machines is a technicality. Her mind is already gone. Her spirit lingers, but it's tied to her bed because we are. If we want it free, we have to do this for her." Molly heard an echo of her father and saw no inconsistency. Yes, Robin's soul was in heaven. Her spirit, though, was different. It was the part of her that lived on in everyone she left behind. In that regard, what Kathryn said made sense. — Barbara Delinsky

No mean person is mean all the time. The whole point of being mean is to fluctuate so that you can hold out the hope for someone. So someone will hold out the hope that they're gonna catch you on the sunny side or that you're gonna be nice this time. The tyranny is inconsistency. Somebody thats consistently mean is something that is pretty easy to sort out. The reality is that the meanest people can be wonderful sometimes. That's the whole point of meanness because otherwise it's too obvious. It's the niceness that gets you trapped in the dysfunction. That is the problem and so the fact that you have this belief that there is hope in the relationship is foundational to the dysfunction. — Stefan Molyneux

Bless the ladies and their charming inconsistency! They demand to be treated like men, but they react like women. — Elizabeth Peters

On a wrong road, inconsistency is inevitable; if it were not so, mankind would be sacrificed. A false principle never has been, and never will be, carried out to the end. — Frederic Bastiat

More than this, even in those white men who professed religion we found much inconsistency of conduct. They spoke much of spiritual things, while seeking only the material. — Charles Eastman

Inconsistency is my very essence; it is the game I never cease to play as I turn my wheel in its ever changing circle, filled with joy as I bring the top to the bottom and the bottom to the top — Boethius

The inconsistency of the institution of domestic slavery with the principles of the Declaration of Independence was seen and lamented ... no insincerity or hypocrisy can be fairly laid to their charge. Never from their lips was heard one syllable of attempt to justify the institution of slavery. They universally considered it as a reproach fastened upon them by the unnatural step-mother country and they saw that before the principles of the Declaration of Independence slavery, in common with every other mode of oppression, was destined sooner or later to be banished from the earth. — John Quincy Adams

Oh, the shortcomings and inconsistency of the average human being, especially when this human being is a man trying to manage women's affairs! — Elizabeth Cady Stanton

But ought we to give him up? 'I should say, certainly not.' Then I fear that I must lay hands on my father Parmenides; but do not call me a parricide; for there is no way out of the difficulty except to show that in some sense not-being is; and if this is not admitted, no one can speak of falsehood, or false opinion, or imitation, without falling into a contradiction. You observe how unwilling I am to undertake the task; for I know that I am exposing myself to the charge of inconsistency in asserting the being of not-being. But if I am to make the attempt, I think that I had better begin at the beginning. — Plato

Every joke can't be dazzling. And if you think you spotted an inconsistency, you did! — George Meyer

Inconsistency on the part of pastors and the faithful between what they say and what they do, between word and manner of life, is undermining the Church's credibility. — Pope Francis

I used to feel so far from God, like I had to work my way back to Him after periods of inconsistency ... it's not about trying harder. it's about turning sooner. It's about confessing sin and turning back to God's gift of grace. Grace is God's "undeserved favor." We don't have to earn it, and we cannot lose it when we act undeserving. — Renee Swope

Inconsistency is the jewel of the American people. — Susan B. Anthony

A critic may reject some miracle stories as legendary, and not others, with no inconsistency at all for the simple reason that even if one holds miracles to be possible, one need not hold legends to be impossible! There are other factors, literary and historiographical ones, that might lead a critic to conclude that even though miracles can happen, it does not appear that in this or that case they did. — Robert M. Price

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 opinion. — James Russell Lowell

It is good to be often reminded of the inconsistency of human nature, and to learn to look without wonder or disgust on the weaknesses which are found in the strongest minds. — Thomas B. Macaulay

It will probably surprise many who know nothing of Proudhon save his declaration that 'property is robbery' to learn that he was perhaps the most vigorous hater of Communism that ever lived on this planet. But the apparent inconsistency vanishes when you read his book and find that by property he means simply legally privileged wealth or the power of usury, and not at all the possession by the labourer of his products. — Benjamin Tucker

Having no resources within himself, he was compelled to be the copyist of many, and being such, he was forever the victim of inconsistency; — Frederick Douglass

If you mix a negative attitude with chaos and sprinkle a little inconsistency over the top, you are almost guaranteed to fail. — Shannon Sorrels

We despise all reverences and all objects of reverence which are outside the pale of our list of sacred things. And yet, with strange inconsistency, we are shocked when other people despise and defile the things which are holy to us. — Mark Twain

If there is one word that makes creative people different from others, it is the word complexity. Instead of being an individual, they are a multitude. Like the color white that includes all colors, they tend to bring together the entire range of human possibilities within themselves. Creativity allows for paradox, light, shadow, inconsistency, even chaos -and creative people experience both extremes with equal intensity. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Blessed is He in whose hand is dominion, and He is over all things competent.
[He] who created death and life to test you [as to] which of you is best in deed - and He is the Exalted in Might, the Forgiving .
And] who created seven heavens in layers. You do not see in the creation of the Most Merciful any inconsistency. So return [your] vision [to the sky]; do you see any breaks?
Then return [your] vision twice again. [Your] vision will return to you humbled while it is fatigued."
( A translation of holy Quran, 67:1-4) — Qur'an

There is no inconsistency when God raises up those who have fallen prostrate. — John Calvin

To be perfectly honest with you, having a mother as an actress - who I watched struggle tremendously during my childhood - and to watch fluctuations of ups and downs is difficult. She did mainly television, so I think I associated that with a life of inconsistency. As I've come into my own, I realize it has nothing to do with the medium. — Alaina Huffman

People have often accused me of inconsistency but i feel that i have always, at any given junction, done the same thing. Exactly what i pleased. — Joe Abercrombie

Everything seemed to have less to do with power, and more to do with right and wrong. And it was also apparent that laws were being manipulated using the inconsistency of free will and the shitty make-up of human nature. ~RUIN Katara Aggelos — Lucian Bane