"Same difference"

Epigrammatic reflections of the paradoxes of ‘sameness’:

The successive unstable cabinets of the 3^me République, were mostly a reshuffling of the usual suspects.  Thus,

There was some truth in the quip of Clemenceau, when he was criticized by a deputy for having overthrown so many governments.  “I have overthrown only one,” he replied.  “They are all the same.”

-- Wm Shirer, The Collapse of the Third Republic (1969), p. 101

Mocking Anglo-American journalists who take the Russia tour and become pundits:

After a year  they went home … sat down at their typewriters, and hastily wrote the same book.  I have been reading that book all spring, under several different titles.

-- Malcolm Cowley, The Flower and the Leaf (misc., collected 1985)

For the full essay, to which those are an appetizer or rince-guele, click here:

     Categories and Sameness

For the general topic of Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, here:

     Nothing new under the Sun.