44 Ant Quotes About The Diligent Insects

"Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrassment. They farm fungi, raise aphids as livestock, launch armies into wars, use chemical sprays to alarm and confuse enemies, capture slaves… They do everything but watch television."
- Lewis Thomas

"If all humans disappeared today ,the earth would start improving tomorrow.If all the ants disappeared today ,the earth would start dying tomorrow."
- David Suzuki

"Do not kill ants. They are your best friends."
- Joe Brainard

"I discovered that if one looks a little closer at this beautiful world, there are always red ants underneath."
- David Lynch

"The whale is endangered, while the ant continues to do just fine."
- Bill Vaughan

"Not all ants use violence to dominate their world; some use more subtle methods."
- E. O. Wilson

"If army ants are wandering around and they get lost, they start to follow a simple rule:Just do what the ant in front of you does. The ants eventually end up in a circle. There’s this famous example of one that was 1,200 feet long and lasted for two days; the ants just kept marching around and around in a circle until they died."
- James Surowiecki

"Ants and savages put strangers to death."
- Bertrand Russell

"A whale out of water is overrun by ants."
- Lao Tzu

"Ants are more like the parts of an animal than entities on their own. They are mobile cells, circulating through a dense connective tissue of other ants in a matrix of twigs. The circuits are so intimately interwoven that the anthill meets all the essential criteria of an organism."
- Lewis Thomas

"Every ant knows the formula of its ant-hill; every bee knows the formula of its beehive. They know it in their own way, not in our way. Only humankind does not know its own formula."
- Fyodor Dostoevsky

"Ants are not only efficient, they are hard-working and thrifty, qualities which have always seemed like good reasons for seeing them as virtuous role models."
- William Morton Wheeler

"The iron rule of nature is: you get what you reward for. If you want ants to come, you put sugar on the floor."
- Charlie Munger

"An ant on the move does more than a dozing ox."
- Lao Tzu

"I think everybody should study ants. They have an amazing four-part philosophy. Never give up, look ahead, stay positive, and do all you can."
- Jim Rohn

"Go to the ant thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise."
- Bible (Proverbs 6:6)

"If an ant carries an object a hundred times its weight, you can carry burdens many times your size."
- Matshona Dhliwayo

"Turn on the prudent Ant, thy heedful eyes, Observe her labours, Sluggard, and be wise."
- Samuel Johnson

"Ants are good citizens; they place group interest first. But they carry it so far, they have few or no political rights. An ant doesn’t have the vote, apparently; he just has his duties."
- Clarence Day

"What is it about the ant way of life that has stood the test of time so well? All ants belong to extended families, and carry their prey home to share. Unselfishness is the rule. Everything they do is for their colony's good."
- Bill Mason

"The tiny ant dares to enter the lion's ear."
- Armenian Proverb

"Caution is not cowardice; even the ants march armed."
- Ugandan Proverb

"Even the wishes of a small ant reach heaven."
- Japanese Proverb

"He who runs from the white ant may stumble upon the stinging ant."
- Nigerian Proverb

"At high tide fish eat ants; at low tide ants eat fish."
- Thailand Proverb

"Even the ant has his bite."
- Turkish Proverb

"In an ant colony, dew is a flood."
- Afghan Proverb

"Even the sharpest ear cannot hear an ant singing."
- Sudanese Proverb

"An ant hole may collapse an embankment."
- Japanese Proverb

"Even Kings and emperors with heaps of wealth and vast dominion cannot compare with an ant filled with the love of God."
- Guru Nanak

"God cuts out our path, makes a groove in the clay with His finger, and we poor blind ants slide down into it."
- Maria McCann

"If we were created in God's image, then when God was a child he smushed fire ants with his fingertips and avoided tough questions."
- Buddy Wakefield

"It's not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is, what are we busy about?"
- Henry David Thoreau

"Finally he was just another ant, working and working until he died without meaning."
- Haruki Murakami

"One bee cannot build a hive; one ant cannot build a colony."
- Matshona Dhliwayo

"For example, the tiny ant, a creature of great industry, drags with its mouth whatever it can, and adds it to the heap which she is piling up, not unaware nor careless of the future."
- Horace

"Forbear thou great good husband, little ant: A little respite from thy flood of sweat; Thou, thine own horse and cart under this plant Thy spacious tent, fan thy prodigious heat; Down with thy double load of that one grain; It is a granarie for all thy train."
- Richard Lovelace

"I do not see why we should not be as just to an ant as to a human being."
- Charles Kingsley

"May this house stand until an ant drinks the ocean and a tortoise circles the world."
- Jonathan Carroll

"The greatest enemies of ants are other ants, just as greatest enemies of men are other men."
- Auguste Forel

"When you have seen one ant, one bird, one tree, you have not seen them all."
- E. O. Wilson

"If ants are such busy workers, how come they find time to go to all the picnics?"
- Marie Dressler

"I bought an ant farm. I don't know where I am going to get a tractor that small!"
- Steven Wright

"I would like to live a day in the life of an ant and hope not to get squashed."
- Kiowa Gordon