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Quotestudy:
“In the Kingdom of the Blind,
the One-Eyed Man is King”
...in the street of the totally blind, the one-eyed man is called clear-sighted, and the infant is called a scholar. ~Midrash Rabbah,
Inter cæcos, regnat strabus. In regione cæcorum rex est luscus. (Among the blind the squinter reigns. In the country of the blind, one-eyed man is king.) ~Proverbs quoted by Desiderius Erasmus, Adagiorum Chiliades, c.1514 [William Barker, in The Adages of Erasmus, 2001, notes: “Among the blind, the cross-eyed man is king... Erasmus picked up an uncorrected form of the Greek from Apostolius 7.23.” Another similar from Erasmus: “Among beggars, he who has only a little money is a Croesus.”
His Latin tongue doth hobbyl
He doth but clout and cobbel
In Tullis facultie
Called humanitie
Yet proudly he dare pretend
How no man can him amend
But haue ye not heard this
How an one eyed man is
Wel sighted, when
He is among blynd men.
~John Skelton, 1522, “Why come ye not to Court,” in Pithy, Pleasaunt, and Profitable Workes of Maister Skelton, Poete Laureate, to King Henry the VIIIth, 1736
In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. ~English proverb, early 16th century, A Dictionary of the Proverbs in England in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries by Morris Palmer Tilley, 1950, and The Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs, 1970
Entre los ciegos el tuerto es Rey... (Among the blind a one-eyed man is king.) ~F. Pedro de Vega, Declaracion de los Siete Psalmos Penitenciales, 1606 [“...santos que resplandece como Estrellas, otros como la Luna, otros como el Sol pero es esta la diferencia...” Also quoted as Spanish proverb: “En pais de los ciegas el tuerto es rey.”
In the kingdom of blind men, the one eyed is king. ~Jacula Prudentum; or, Outlandish Proverbs, Sentences, etc., George Herbert, 1640
Among the blind the one-eye'd blinkard reigns,
So rules among the drownèd he that drains.
~Andrew Marvell, Character of Holland, 1665
The Egyptians seem to have verified the Proverb, That he that has but one Eye, is a Prince among those that have none. ~William Wotton, “Of the History and Mathematicks of the Ancient Egyptians,” Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning, 1694
Unoculus inter cæcos. (A one-eyed man among the blind.) ~Latin phrase, c.1700s [“A man whose very slender abilities are perceptible only when among the grossly ignorant.” ~A Dictionary of Select and Popular Quotations, Which are in Daily Use; Taken from the Latin, French, Greek, Spanish, and Italian Languages; translated into English, with Illustrations, Historical and Idiomatic, by D. E. MacDonnel, third edition, 1818. This Latin phrase has been in use since at least 1780, as quoted by James Boswell in The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., 1791.
The blind of an eye is a king among the blind. ~Gaelic proverb, c.1700s [Mackintosh’s Collection of Gaelic Proverbs, and Familiar Phrases; Englished
...for, in a nation of blind people, a one-eyed man would be king. ~William Mudford, Nubilia in Search of a Husband, 1809
‘Parmi les aveugles un borgne est roi,’ says the French proverb... ~Walter Scott, 1814 [Translation: Among the blind a one-eyed man is king. Waverley; or, ’Tis Sixty Years Since. Alternate French wording: “En la terre des aveugles celui qui n'a qu'un ceil y est roi.”
‘A one eyed man is a king amongst the blind,’ says an old French proverb, so were you in your time, but kings and lights, capitals and candles are very different in our enlightened age... ~E. M., “Answer from a Gas Light to an Old Lamp,” The European Magazine and London Review, 1824
A one-eyed man is a king among the blind. ~Proverb [“Oriental Proverbs:
...he repeated very frequently and always with a profounder note of derision that exploded proverb: ‘In the Country of the Blind the One-eyed Man is King...’ Any one who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of the eyes are of two kinds... either from coming out of the light or from going into the light, which is true of the mind's eye, quite as much as of the bodily eye; and he who remembers this when he sees any one whose vision is perplexed and weak, will not be too ready to laugh... But he heeded these things no longer, but lay quite still there, smiling as if he were content now merely to have escaped from the valley of the Blind, in which he had thought to be King. ~H. G. Wells and Plato mash up quotation [Wells’ “The Country of the Blind,” 1904 and 1939, and Plato’s narration of Socrates in the allegory of the cave, from The Republic,
If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind. ~Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano, 1952
In the country of the blind the one-eyed king can still goof up. ~Laurence J. Peter, Peter's Quotations: Idea For Our Time, 1977 ["On second thought, nothing ventured nothing goofed."
But, in the land of the blind,
where the one-eyed man is king,
when he wears the emperor’s new clothes,
he can get away with it.
~David R. Slavitt, “Exception,” Falling from Silence: Poems, 2001
Thank you to Bob for the inspiration to do this research.
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published 2015 Oct 6
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