“Ancient philosophy will always hold its own among those who are worthy to judge it, because it forms… a system that is solid and well articulated like the body, whereas all these scattered members of modern philosophy form no system.”

Source: The Natural History of the Soul (1745), Ch. VI Concerning the Sensitive Faculty of Matter

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Julien Offray de La Mettrie 42
French physician and philosopher 1709–1751

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“Democracy is not a form of government. It is a political philosophy that can be embodied in various systems of government.”

John Allen Fraser (1931) Canadian politician

Source: The House Of Commons At Work (1993), Chapter 1, The System of Government, p. 5

“A propaganda system will consistently portray people abused by enemy states as worthy victims, whereas those treated with equal or greater severity by its own government or clients will be unworthy.”

The evidence of worth may be read from the extent and character of attention and indignation. […] the U.S. media’s practical definitions of worth are political in the extreme and fit well the expectations of a propaganda model. While this differential treatment occurs on a large scale, the media, intellectuals, and public are able to remain unconscious of this fact and maintain a high moral and self-righteous tone. This is evidence of an extremely effective propaganda system. […] The worth of a victim Popieluszko [Polish priest] is valued at somewhere between 137 and 179 times that of a victim in the U.S. client states, or, looking at the matter in reverse, a priest murdered in Latin America is worth less than a hundredth of a priest murdered in Poland.
Source: Manufacturing Consent, with Noam Chomsky, 1988, pp. 37, 39.

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“The possibility of all philosophy … namely, that the intelligence, by affecting itself, gives itself a movement in accordance with its own law — that is, gives itself a form of activity all its own.”

Novalis (1772–1801) German poet and writer

Die Möglichkeit aller Philosophie ... dass sich die Intelligenz durch Selbstberührung eine Selbstgesezmäßige Bewegung - d.i. eine eigne Form der Tätigkeit gibt.
Schriften, p. 63, as translated in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings: Volume 1, 1913-1926 (1996), p. 133

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“Ancient philosophy proposed to mankind an art of living. By contrast, modern philosophy appears above all as the construction of a technical jargon reserved for specialists.”

Pierre Hadot (1922–2010) French historian and philosopher

trans. Michael Chase, p. 272
La Philosophie comme manière de vivre (2001)

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“Nothing is more usual and more natural for those, who pretend to discover anything new to the world in philosophy and the sciences, than to insinuate the praises of their own systems, by decrying all those, which have been advanced before them.”

Introduction
A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40)
Context: Nothing is more usual and more natural for those, who pretend to discover anything new to the world in philosophy and the sciences, than to insinuate the praises of their own systems, by decrying all those, which have been advanced before them. And indeed were they content with lamenting that ignorance, which we still lie under in the most important questions, that can come before the tribunal of human reason, there are few, who have an acquaintance with the sciences, that would not readily agree with them. 'Tis easy for one of judgment and learning, to perceive the weak foundation even of those systems, which have obtained the greatest credit, and have carried their pretensions highest to accurate and profound reasoning. Principles taken upon trust, consequences lamely deduced from them, want of coherence in the parts, and of evidence in the whole, these are every where to be met with in the systems of the most eminent philosophers, and seem to have drawn disgrace upon philosophy itself.

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“Philosophy is not a system of propositions, and not a science.”

Source: Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre, 1925, p. 157 ; As cited in: Thomas Uebel (2012). Empiricism at the Crossroads: The Vienna Circle's Protocol-Sentence. p. 78

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