“In the valley of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”
August Wilson Gem of the Ocean
Source: Gem of the Ocean
Reputedly Tyndale's last words while tied to the stake, as quoted in the Book of Martyrs by John Foxe. Contemporary accounts do not mention this statement: "Contemporaries noted no such words, however, only that the strangling was bungled and that he suffered terribly." Brian Moynahan, in God’s Bestseller: William Tyndale, Thomas More, and the Writing of the English Bible — A Story of Martyrdom and Betrayal (2002) p. 377.
“In the valley of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”
August Wilson Gem of the Ocean
Source: Gem of the Ocean
“In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king.”
Niccolo Machiavelli (1469–1527) Italian politician, Writer and Author
In terra di ciechi chi vi ha un occhio è signore.
Act III, scene ix
The Mandrake (1524)
“In the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king.”
In regione caecorum rex est luscus.
Desiderius Erasmus book Adagia
Adagia (first published 1500, with numerous expanded editions through 1536), III, IV, 96
Also in the same passage of the Adagia is a variant: Inter caecos regnat strabus (Among the blind, the squinter rules).
Clifford Geertz (1926–2006) American anthropologist
Clifford Geertz, Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology (1983) Basic Books, 2000, p. 58.
“Who is king in the world of the blind when there isn't even a one eyed man?”
John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) American economist and diplomat
Source: The Age of Uncertainty (1977), Chapter 6, p. 180
Edward III of England (1312–1377) King of England
Letter to his admirals (18 August 1336), quoted in Ian Mortimer, The Perfect King: The Life of Edward III, Father of the English Nation (Vintage, 2008), p. 130
“Goodnight you princes of Maine, you kings of New England.”
John Irving book The Cider House Rules
Source: The Cider House Rules