[Ads-l] Modern Proverb: If you always do what you've always done,

[Laurence Horn]

> On Apr 27, 2016, at 4:35 PM, James A. Landau <JJJRLandau at NETSCAPE.COM> wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 26 Apr 2016 13:35:00 Zone-0500 Susan G Yerkes <susanyerkes at UTEXAS.EDU> wrote:
> 
> <quote>
> I have been looking for reliable attribution for the related quotation
> "If nothing changes, nothing changes."
> My Google searches have just turned up a myriad of speakers and slight 
> variations of the wording. Any suggestions?
> <end quote>
> 
> Distantly related:
> from The Sound of Music
> "Nothing comes from nothing
> Nothing ever could
> But somewhere in my youth or childhood
> I must have done something good"
> 
> 

..which even more distantly influenced Shakespeare (a big fan of musicals):

CORDELIA:   Nothing, my lord. 
LEAR.             Nothing? 
CORDELIA.   Nothing. 
LEAR.             How? Nothing will come of nothing.

Shows what he knew.

And there's the earlier version in Latin--

Ex nihilo nihil (fit).

--which Parmenides liked to cite in Greek, for some reason.

LH
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