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> "The English have a system, which is no system, which is also a system, only better." - (?? British political philosopher c 1900 - does anyone know this o
by samizdis 5y ago
> "The English have a system, which is no system, which is also a
system, only better." - (?? British political philosopher c 1900 -
does anyone know this one?)
I don't, but that quote was used in a comment [1] about five or six weeks ago, and the commenter's relevant bit was:
Nietzche said it best:
I mistrust all systematizers and avoid them. The will to a system is a lack of integrity.
Or maybe (I think Sidgwick):
The English system is "No system", Which is also a system, only better.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30598863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30598863
[Edit to add: I've been dumb there. You were that commenter, so this won't have helped - sorry.]
- nonrandomstring 5y agoYeah, but thanks for the thought, I since found it wasn't Sidgwick and it's bugging me.
- samizdis 5y agoHa! The reason I remembered the original comment was because, at the time, I wanted to find out who'd said it - it's such a great quote. So I did the usual DDG, then Alexandria, Google Scholar, Dogpile, then Kagi plus a few esoteric search engines and I found nothing. (But there were mentions similar to it when referring to "common law" in England.) It's frustrating, but as far as search terms go (in the typical tf/idf indexing model), the most unique word is, um, system ... and that doesn't help. I know only two philosophy people, and I am going to ask them - and get them to ask their friends. Yeah, I shouldn't let stuff like this bug me, but it just does :)