David's final phrase seems familiar. Thanks to Google and Ward's Wiki,
I found what may be the original, though it has been repeated many
times since.

"... ALGOL 60 ... Here is a language so far ahead of its time, that it
was not only an improvement on its predecessors, but also on nearly
all its successors." Tony Hoare, 1973, Hints on Programming Language
Design, (Appendix, p 27)
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~necula/cs263/handouts/hoarehints.pdf