Nothing comes from nothing
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Nothing comes from nothing is a philosophical expression often stated in its Latin form: ex nihilo nihil fit. In the Chandogya upanishad of circa 800 BCE, belonging to the philosophical portion of the Hindu scriptures, this ideas is expressed as - "How can Non-existence come from Existence? Existence alone existed in the beginning". Today, the idea is loosely associated with the laws of conservation of mass and energy.
In logic, nothing is represented by the empty set, and it is trivially true that no thing (any defined concept or element) can be extracted from such a set. Other definitions of nothing are based on the negation of being (this is discussed by Heidegger for example), and with such a definition anything that doesn't yet exist and isn't completely determined does come from nothing, in an equally trivial sense.
In John Gardner's Grendel, Grendel says "Nihil ex nihilo" after he wakes up from a nightmare at the end of Chapter 10.
