"it's turtles all they way down"

[Fred Shapiro]

On Sat, 18 Nov 2006, Stephen Goranson wrote:

> 1902 As, in the old Hindu account of how the world was supported....the
> elephant on a tortoise....[when challenged] he sought to save himself in
> this quandry by roundly asserting that it was "tortoise all the way
> down" The New World and the New Thought, J. T. Bixby

Thanks for this excellent improvement on the information in The Yale Book
of Quotations -- I would encourage you to continue to work on non-'yard
topics.

I have found other evidence since The Yale Book of Quotations was
finalized.  It appears that there was an earlier version of the "turtles
all the way down" anecdote, namely "rocks all the way down."  I have not
thoroughly researched the latter, but there are "rocks all the way down"
anecdotes at least as far back as 1860.

Fred Shapiro


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Fred R. Shapiro                             Editor
Associate Librarian for Collections and     YALE BOOK OF QUOTATIONS
   Access and Lecturer in Legal Research     Yale University Press
Yale Law School                             ISBN 0300107986
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