A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.

The consistent thinker, the consistently moral man, is either a walking mummy or else, if he has not succeeded in stifling all his vitality, a fanatical monomaniac.

It is not best to swap horses while crossing the river.

All sudden and violent changes, whatever their causes or character, must tend to decrease the respect for status quo as a natural order of things.

To hold the same views at forty as we held at twenty is to have been stupefied for a score of years and to take rank, not as a prophet, but as an unteach-able brat, well birched and none the wiser.

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.

It's not up to me ... to make the world consistent.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds ...