Ben Rogge on Consistency, Smith and Ricardo
Some would argue that consistency is not always a good thing. Ben Rogge's favorite quote from Emerson was:
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesman and philosophers and divines.
Rogge used to mention this quote when he defended Adam Smith against the charge of inconsistency. He would say that Smith's errors on one page would not keep him from writing an important (albeit inconsistent) truth on the next page. In this regard, he contrasted Smith with Ricardo. Ricardo was consistent, and since he was wrong at the start, he was consistently wrong throughout.
Source for the Emerson quote:
Bartlett, John. Familiar Quotations. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1955, p. 501, column b. Bartlett gives the source as Emerson's essay "Self-Reliance."
