Ant Hill Mob

Famous quotes containing the words ant, hill and/or mob:

    Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise.
    Bible: Hebrew Proverbs, 6:6.

    The words were rendered by Samuel Johnson in the opening lines of The Ant: “Turn on the prudent ant thy heedful eyes, Observe her labours, sluggard, and be wise.”

    The hill farmer ... always seems to make out somehow with his corn patch, his few vegetables, his rifle, and fishing rod. This self-contained economy creates in the hillman a comparative disinterest in the world’s affairs, along with a disdain of lowland ways. “I don’t go to question the good Lord in his wisdom,” runs the phrasing attributed to a typical mountaineer, “but I jest cain’t see why He put valleys in between the hills.”
    —Administration in the State of Arka, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)

    The apparent rulers of the English nation are like the imposing personages of a splendid procession: it is by them the mob are influenced; it is they whom the spectators cheer. The real rulers are secreted in second-rate carriages; no one cares for them or asks after them, but they are obeyed implicitly and unconsciously by reason of the splendour of those who eclipsed and preceded them.
    Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)