“Be consistent.”

—  Larry Wall

In the perl man page.
Documentation

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Be consistent." by Larry Wall?
Larry Wall photo
Larry Wall 294
American computer programmer and author, creator of Perl 1954

Related quotes

Aldous Huxley photo

“Too much consistency is as bad for the mind as it is for the body. Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

"Wordsworth in the Tropics" in Do What You Will (1929)
Source: Do What You Will: Twelve Essays
Context: Too much consistency is as bad for the mind as it is for the body. Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead. Consistent intellectualism and spirituality may be socially valuable, up to a point; but they make, gradually, for individual death.

James Callaghan photo

“A leader has to appear consistent. That doesn't mean he has to be consistent.”

James Callaghan (1912–2005) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom; 1976-1979

Post-Prime Ministerial
Source: The Harvard Business Review (1 November 1986)

Wilkie Collins photo

“The best men are not consistent in good—why should the worst men be consistent in evil?”

Wilkie Collins book The Woman in White

Source: The Woman in White

Woodrow Wilson photo

“America is not anything if it consists of each of us. It is something only if it consists of all of us”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

Speech on Military Preparedness, Pittsburgh (29 January 1916)
1910s
Context: We want the spirit of America to be efficient; we want American character to be efficient; we want American character to display itself in what I may, perhaps, be allowed to call spiritual efficiency—clear, disinterested thinking and fearless action along the right lines of thought. America is not anything if it consists of each of us. It is something only if it consists of all of us; and it can consist of all of us only as our spirits are banded together in a common enterprise.

Larry Wall photo

“The problem with being consistent is that there are lots of ways to be consistent, and they're all inconsistent with each other.”

Larry Wall (1954) American computer programmer and author, creator of Perl

Message-ID <20050516005559.GC26184@wall.org> http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl6.language/21259, to perl6-language mailing-list.
Other

Thomas Paine photo

“Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.”

Thomas Paine book The Age of Reason

Source: The Age of Reason

Mark Twain photo

“Work consists of whatever a body is OBLIGED to do, and…Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.”

Mark Twain book The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Source: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Ch. 2

Mark Twain photo

“The first half of life consists of the capacity to enjoy without the chance, the last half consists of the chance without the capacity. ”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist
Oscar Wilde photo

“Consistency is the hallmark of the unimaginative.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

"The Relation of Dress to Art," The Pall Mall Gazette http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14062/14062-h/14062-h.htm (February 28, 1885)
reprinted in Aristotle at Afternoon Tea:The Rare Oscar Wilde (1991).
Variant: Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

Noam Chomsky photo

“The consistent anarchist, then, should be”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

" Notes on Anarchism http://www.chomsky.info/articles/1970----.htm," in: Daniel Guérin Anarchism: From Theory to Practice, 1970.
Quotes 1960s-1980s, 1970s
Context: The consistent anarchist, then, should be a socialist, but a socialist of a particular sort. He will not only oppose alienated and specialized labor and look forward to the appropriation of capital by the whole body of workers, but he will also insist that this appropriation be direct, not exercised by some elite force acting in the name of the proletariat.

Related topics