“I can assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland.”

— Newton N. Minow

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.

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Newton N. Minow 6

United States attorney and former chairman of the Federal C… 1926

Richard Paul Evans (1962) American writer

Source: The Walk

“Man, I can assure you, is a nasty creature.”

Molière (1622–1673) French playwright and actor

““Can I trust you, my friend?”
“If you can’t, then what is my assurance worth?””

Robert A. Heinlein book Beyond This Horizon

Source: Beyond This Horizon (1948; originally serialized in 1942), Chapter 4, “Boy meets Girl”, p. 48

“I can assure you that these colored troops are regularly mustered into the service of the United States”

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States

Regarding Confederate executions of captured Union prisoners of war at Milliken's Bend by hanging Letter to Richard Taylor at Vicksburg (1863) https://archive.org/stream/wordsofourheroul00gran/wordsofourheroul00gran_djvu.txt
1860s
Context: I feel no inclination to retaliate for the offences of irresponsible persons; but if it is the policy of any General intrusted with the command of troops to show no quarter, or to punish with death prisoners taken in battle, I will accept the issue. It may be you propose a different line of policy towards black troops, and officers commanding them, to that practiced towards white troops. So, I can assure you that these colored troops are regularly mustered into the service of the United States. The Government, and all officers under the Government, are bound to give the same protection to these troops that they do to any other troops.

“If you can see, look. If you can look, observe.”

José Saramago book Blindness

Se podes olhar, vê. Se podes ver, repara.
Epigraph
Blindness (1995)

“I know not how to aid you, save in the assurance of one of mature age, and much severe experience, that you can not fail, if you resolutely determine, that you will not.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Lettert to George C. Latham (22 July 1860) http://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln4/1:108?rgn=div1;view=fulltext; published in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (1953) by Roy P. Basler, vol. 4, p. 4
1860s
Context: I have scarcely felt greater pain in my life than on learning yesterday from Bob's letter, that you had failed to enter Harvard University. And yet there is very little in it, if you will allow no feeling of discouragement to seize, and prey upon you. It is a certain truth, that you can enter, and graduate in, Harvard University; and having made the attempt, you must succeed in it. ``Must´´ is the word. I know not how to aid you, save in the assurance of one of mature age, and much severe experience, that you can not fail, if you resolutely determine, that you will not.

“Whether you can observe a thing or not depends on the theory which you use. It is the theory which decides what can be observed.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Objecting to the placing of observables at the heart of the new quantum mechanics, during Heisenberg's 1926 lecture at Berlin; related by Heisenberg, quoted in Unification of Fundamental Forces (1990) by Abdus Salam ISBN 0521371406
1920s

“Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Letter to high school student Barbara Lee Wilson (7 January 1943), Einstein Archives 42-606
1940s

“I can assure you that no kingdom has ever had as many civil wars as the kingdom of Christ.”

Montesquieu (1689–1755) French social commentator and political thinker

No. 29. (Rica writing to Ibben)
Lettres Persanes (Persian Letters, 1721)

“Condoms will break, but I can assure you that vows of abstinence will break more easily than condoms.”

Joycelyn Elders (1933) American pediatrician, public health administrator, and former Surgeon General of the United States

"Dr. Joycelyn Elders is so fucking cool", 2007-06-04, Jessica Valenti, w:Jessica Valenti, 2014-05-23, Feministing.com http://web.archive.org/web/20070713094431/http://feministing.com/archives/007116.html,
Abstinence education

“I can assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland.”

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