Sixteenth-century English Proverb.

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    It is an equal failing to trust everybody, and to trust nobody.
    —18th-century English proverb.

    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)