C.S. Peirce

Of the fifty or hundred systems of philosophy that have been advanced at different times of the world’s history, perhaps the larger number have been, not so much results of historical evolution, as happy thoughts which have accidentally occurred to their authors.

Charles Sanders Peirce, “The Architecture of Theories,” in The Monist Vol. I, No. 2 (January 1891), p. 161. Reprinted in many collections, including Justus Buchler, editor, The Philosophy of Charles Peirce (1940).