
“He can be a charming man, but he can be quite nasty too. Because this is what he does.”
About Marco van Basten after the fall-out with Mark van Bommel
“He can be a charming man, but he can be quite nasty too. Because this is what he does.”
About Marco van Basten after the fall-out with Mark van Bommel
During a lecture on leadership quoted in [Field Marshal KM Kariappa Memorial Lectures, 1995-2000, http://books.google.com/books?id=Eux31FCNj8MC&pg=PA21, 2001, Lancer Publishers, 978-81-7062-119-5, 21–]
“I can assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland.”
Speech to the National Association of Broadcasters, May 9, 1961 (the Wasteland Speech)
Context: When television is good, nothing--not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers--nothing is better.
But when television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there without a book, magazine, newspaper, profit and-loss sheet or rating book to distract you--and keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland.
“I assure you I had rather be the first man here than the second man in Rome.”
On passing through a village in the Alps, as attributed in Parallel Lives, by Plutarch, as translated by John Langhorne and William Langhorne (1836), p. 499
Variant: First in a village rather than second in Rome.
“A nice man is a man of nasty ideas.”
Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711-1726)
“The more someone assures you that everything is okay, the more you can be assured that it's not.”
Source: The Walk
“Forgive me, Majesty. I am a vulgar man! But I assure you, my music is not.”
Source: movie Amadeus (1984)
““Can I trust you, my friend?”
“If you can’t, then what is my assurance worth?””
Source: Beyond This Horizon (1948; originally serialized in 1942), Chapter 4, “Boy meets Girl”, p. 48