<P> "Self - Reliance" is an 1841 essay written by American transcendentalist philosopher and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson . It contains the most thorough statement of one of Emerson's recurrent themes, the need for each individual to avoid conformity and false consistency, and follow their own instincts and ideas . It is the source of one of Emerson's most famous quotations: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines ." This essay is an analysis into the nature of the "aboriginal self on which a universal reliance may be grounded ." </P> <P> The first hint of the philosophy that would become "Self - Reliance" was presented by Ralph Waldo Emerson as part of a sermon in September 1830 a month after his first marriage . His wife Ellen was sick with tuberculosis and, as Emerson's biographer Robert D. Richardson wrote, "Immortality had never been stronger or more desperately needed!" </P>

Who said consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds