The blind leading the blind


"The blind leading the blind" is an idiom and a metaphor in the form of a parallel phrase, it is used to describe a situation where a person who knows nothing is getting advice and help from another person who knows almost nothing.

History

The idiom can be traced back to the Upanishads, which were written between 800 BCE and 200 BCE.
A similar metaphor exists in the Buddhist Pali Canon, composed in North India, and preserved orally until it was committed to writing during the Fourth Buddhist Council in Sri Lanka in 29 BCE.
The expression appears in Horace: Caecus caeco dux. Horace was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus
The saying appears several times in the Bible with similar stories appearing in the gospels of Matthew, Luke and Thomas, possibly via the Q source.
Sextus Empiricus compares ignorant teachers and blind guides in Outlines of Scepticism:
The phrase appears in Adagia, an annotated collection of Greek and Latin proverbs, compiled during the Renaissance by Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus. The first edition, titled Collectanea Adagiorum, was published in Paris in 1500 CE.

Artistic depictions

Perhaps the most famous artistic depiction of the phrase is Pieter Bruegel's The Blind Leading the Blind. The distemper on canvas painting was completed in 1568, and is currently in the collection of the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples, Italy.