Who wrote: “The more things change, the more they stay the same”?

This is a phrase (epigram) that Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr first used in January 1849 in a monthly French journal, Les Guêpes. Today, as in the past, his epigrams are frequently quoted. Alphose Karr was a was a French critic, journalist, and novelist who like other critics used epigrams as a method to make a point in a brief, interesting, memorable, and sometimes surprising or satirical manner. It could be a statement having a point that is ends in a punchline or satirical twist.

Specifically, with the epigram: "The more things change, the more things stay the same", it has come to mean that sometimes what we perceive as a significant change is really not so significant, and vice versa. Or, a series of groundbreaking events can cycle back to a state eerily reminiscent of their beginning. The phrase is used to show that change and constant are two sides of the same coin, one we are rarely taught to see as whole. One without the other should feel like the sound of one hand clapping.