my second-favorite quotation

[George Thompson]

This one is for Fred.

I believe I have posted before that my second-favorite quotation is from Herman Hickman, the early 1950s Yale football coach.  When asked one year what his hopes were for the his team, he said that they were the same as every year, that the team would play at least well enough to keep the alumni sullen but not mutinous.

It seems that I'm not the only one who remembers this line.  The Sunday Business section of the NYTimes, June 20, 2004, p. 1, col. 4, quotes Richard D. Parsons, chief executive and chairman of Time Warner, referring to an appearance by AOL-Warner exectives at a meeting of company employees in 2002:

"When we were here in '02, Barry said that people were disappointed and somber," he said, then paused a beqat for effect.  "They were sullen, bordering on mutinous, is what they were."

GAT


George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African
Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998.