Word: hobgoblin
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...Hollis roommate of the nineteenth century, Ralph Waldo Emerson '21, knew the importance of change and the need to let go when he said that "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." I did want so much to be true to my first opinion about tradition and the familiar, but the light and open spaces of the Barker Center have made me happily inconsistent. After all, there is a tradition of the new, even here at Harvard...
...this more a guideline than a rule--has come from using the wisdom of my ghostly Hollis roommate, R.W. Emerson himself. We know how he favored independence and how he wasn't afraid to be creatively inconsistent. As he said (probably around fall term?), "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds...
...foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. With more mental channels to choose from than cable TV, Dick Morris could argue the case round or square or Rosicrucian or vegetarian, as long, one suspects, as the money was consistently green. Or maybe Morris was just beguiled by his own genius for spinning like a Sufi to whatever moral music the customer wished to play...
...foreign policy, as elsewhere, consistency is generally a virtue, but, as Emerson noted, a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds. The consistency of America's Russia policy has become foolish and even harmful to the national interests...
...years later the landscape is not blooming, and recovery of the east is likely to take 10 years at least. Kohl said there would be no new taxes, but the government enacted stiff "unity surcharges" on income taxes last year. He promised to control inflation, the economic hobgoblin of postwar Germany, yet it is running higher than 4%. Last week Kohl seemed to misread the public mood, blithely dismissing the labor unrest as "no real crisis...