Skip to main content

Motivation Quote by Ruud van Nistelrooy

"Because people have read those things in the newspapers, they think it is true. Ten years ago all these things I have just mentioned would have upset me"

About this Quote

Ruud van Nistelrooy is talking about fame’s most basic scam: repetition as truth. The line isn’t poetic, but it’s devastatingly practical, the kind of wisdom athletes earn the hard way after watching their private lives turned into public copy. “Because people have read those things in the newspapers, they think it is true” lands like a shrug, but it’s really an indictment of how media authority works. Not persuasion, not evidence - just distribution. Once a story is printed, it graduates from rumor to “what everyone knows,” and the burden of proof flips onto the person being written about.

The second sentence is the quiet pivot from anger to adaptation. “Ten years ago” signals a career’s worth of tabloid cycles, transfer sagas, and dressing-room mythology. Early on, the scrutiny feels personal, like an attack that demands a rebuttal. With time, the athlete learns the more brutal lesson: outrage is a form of participation. The press machine feeds on reaction, and the public often reads emotion as confirmation.

There’s also a professional subtext here. Van Nistelrooy is narrating maturity, but he’s also defending focus. In elite football, being “upset” is not just a feeling; it’s a performance cost. This is reputation management reframed as mental fitness: the capacity to treat headlines as weather. He’s not claiming the stories don’t matter. He’s admitting they matter too much - unless you learn to stop letting other people’s narratives write your mood.

Quote Details

TopicResilience
More Quotes by Ruud Add to List
Ruud van Nistelrooy on media repetition and calm perspective
Click to enlarge Portrait | Landscape

About the Author

Netherland Flag

Ruud van Nistelrooy (born July 1, 1976) is a Athlete from Netherland.

25 more quotes available

View Profile

Similar Quotes