[samizdis]

> "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

[Edit to add: I've been dumb there. You were that commenter, so this won't have helped - sorry.]

[nonrandomstring]

Yeah, but thanks for the thought, I since found it wasn't Sidgwick and it's bugging me.

[samizdis]

Ha! 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 :)