Wit & Attitude Quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson comes in swinging at the kind of “principle” that’s really just anxiety in a nicer outfit. Calling consistency a hobgoblin isn’t just a clever insult; it frames rigid self-sameness as a spooky superstition, something people cling to because they’re frightened of ambiguity, change, or being accused of hypocrisy. The jab at “little minds” is less elitist than diagnostic: smallness here means a cramped imagination that treats yesterday’s opinion as a contract instead of a draft.

The line lands because it flips a moral expectation. Consistency is usually marketed as integrity, a stable spine. Emerson’s point is that integrity can also look like growth, revision, contradiction earned through new experience. The truly “foolish” part is obedience to one’s own past performance. He’s attacking the bureaucratic personality before bureaucracy has fully modernized: the statesman who governs by precedent, the philosopher who protects a system, the divine who polices doctrine. All three are praised for steadiness, and Emerson suggests that steadiness often functions as social control.

Context matters: “Self-Reliance” (1841) is written in a young American republic hungry for its own intellectual independence, and in a Transcendentalist moment that prizes intuition over inherited authority. Emerson isn’t celebrating whim. He’s defending the right to evolve in public without being reduced to a gotcha montage of earlier positions. The subtext is a dare: if your mind is alive, it should scare people who need you predictable.