"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" - Emerson.
When I first read that quote in early High School I didn't understand it. It was the kind of thing that ate at me, I could not get what he was trying to say. To me, consistency was an important part of life; the old adage that you stick to your word. However, that quote transcends the idea of being consistent, because when you often make decisions without all of the information (especially in startups). As new information becomes available, you have to incorporate it into your decision. Sometimes it makes you look like a dick, or someone that doesn't know what direction they want to go to, but that's where different skills (leadership and sales) come in to be able to hold people together.
The full sentence, which should relate to the issues of politics elsewhere in the thread: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines."
To be inconsistent is the easiest thing in the world: just refuse to think about the meaning of what you believe or do. I don't think the point of Bezos's remark was that we should aspire to be inconsistent, but rather, we should be open to considering that our ideas might be wrong.
A better quote for this idea: "Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong."--Ayn Rand
'Contradictions do not exist' is nonsense. Contradictions exist all over the place. Any time you get two people together you'll have contradictions due to viewpoint, experience, perspectives. Denying that contradictions exist is a child-like view of the world. Working with the contradictions of life, now that's the fun and the challenge, isn't it?
Of course different people will have beliefs that contradict each other, but by the definition of a contradiction, they can't both be right. Likewise, if two of your own beliefs end up contradicting each other in the end, then one of those beliefs was wrong. That's the meaning of the quote.
Just letting a contradiction sit there is the lazy thing to do--it's the resolving of contradictions that's the fun part!
"Anyone who denies the law of non-contradiction should be beaten and burned until he admits that to be beaten is not the same as not to be beaten, and to be burned is not the same as not to be burned."--Avicenna
A human brain is but a finite machine, therefore there are only finitely many propositions which you believe. Let us label these propositions p1, p2, ..., pn, where n is the number of propositions you believe. So you believe each of the propositions p1, p2, ..., pn. Yet, unless you are conceited, you know that you sometimes make mistakes, hence not everything you believe is true. Therefore, if you are not conceited, you know that at least one of the propositions, p1, p2, ..., pn is false. Yet you believe each of the propositions p1, p2, ..., pn.
When I first read that quote in early High School I didn't understand it. It was the kind of thing that ate at me, I could not get what he was trying to say. To me, consistency was an important part of life; the old adage that you stick to your word. However, that quote transcends the idea of being consistent, because when you often make decisions without all of the information (especially in startups). As new information becomes available, you have to incorporate it into your decision. Sometimes it makes you look like a dick, or someone that doesn't know what direction they want to go to, but that's where different skills (leadership and sales) come in to be able to hold people together.