Wikipedia:Emerson and Wilde on consistency

Most of us are familiar with this phrase from Ralph Waldo Emerson: A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds

It is often even misquoted as simply "consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" (or even more sloppy approximations like "conformity is a bugbear of small-minded people", etc.).

Here's the quotation in longer form, with more of its original context. It becomes immediately apparent that it has nothing to do with writing style, and everything to do with inflexible mentality:

Most people who quote or misquote the famous part of this passage do so to criticize an argument for textual, stylistic, or other presentational consistency, and are usually doing so to advance some alternative style in a mentally inflexible way. In doing so, they're foolishly displaying an ironic ignorance of Emerson's actual meaning and intent, which was criticism of refusal to change one's mind or adjust one's position in light of new facts or different situations.

Emerson was a professional writer, with a consistent style, and he was entirely used to formal writing that followed strict conventions (stricter than today), and without difficulty complying with the house style of whatever publication he was writing for. Misquoting him as some kind of authority against stylistic consistency is like somehow arriving at the idea that Karl Marx's out-of-context partial quotation "In bourgeois society, capital is independent and has individuality" is Marx strongly defending capitalism, or that the one by Charles Darwin that goes "The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us" is an argument in favor of creationism.

Then the idea went Wilde
About 48 years later, Oscar Wilde – another professional writer entirely used to applying consistency in the use of the English of his era and conforming to the expectations of his publishers – wrote the following: consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative

It, too, is sometimes misquoted, e.g. as "conformity is ...." Wilde's sentence fragment, like Emerson's, has been taken entirely out of context, some of which we will restore here:

If you read the entire short piece, you'll find that it is only about art (plus fashion, which Wilde took to be a vulgarization of art) and its relation to modernity. Wilde was wryly criticizing tonalist painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler's artistic output not being consistent with Whistler's own art-theory lecturing, in the same breath as Wilde decrying, as uncreative, a consistency between an artist's artworks themselves (and thereby praising Whistler's actual work if not theory).

However, for editors' own original work, new ideas, or creative self-expression (except maybe decorating your user page, a little).

If you paid attention to and thought about the Wilde material, you will have noticed something Wikipedia-important: He especially criticizes artists' use of models and any expectations artists or critics might have that art should depend on and closely mirror observed life. In other words,, if this viewpoint is analogized to our writing of what we write on this site. The Wildean position obviously cannot be applied to writing an encyclopedia, which is entirely unlike a painting or a poem (or an unusual hat design).

If you didn't read it, don't quote it
The lesson here: If you haven't actually read a work, don't purport to quote from it, or your assumptions about what it meant (if you even get the out-of-context words right at all) are apt to be embarrassingly incorrect. As the old joke goes: "Never, for when you do, you make an out of  and ." The quip is generously egalitarian in including the reader/listener along with the assumer.

Don't cast aspersions on other editors' mentalities
The Emerson and Wilde quotations, in their original actual senses, are often pertinent in regard to Consensus can change arguments, as when status-quo stonewalling is getting in the way of common sense adjustments to an outmoded approach to how we do something around here. However, many editors are apt to interpret your likening their arguments to small- and closed-mindedness as a civility lapse and aspersion-casting, if not an outright personal attack. Expect to be questioned as to your motive for quoting Emerson or Wilde insulting people with whom they disagreed. They weren't subject to Wikipedia's behavioral guidelines; you are.