The truth seems to be that they [teachers of grammar] were victims of a mighty hoax, one of those true belly-rumbling impostures which a workaday world can but seldom afford.

Grammar is not a set of rules; it is something inherent in the language, and language cannot exist without it. It can be discovered, but not invented.

If language is intimately related to being human, then when we study language we are, to a remarkable degree, studying human nature.

Amoebas, once they have themselves well pulled in two, go their ways-they practice divorce, but no remarriage.

Jazz was formerly a crude term for indulging in an action which in polite society is referred to, if at all, only with such vague Latin terms as intercourse and cohabitation.

Babies and language are the essential ingredients of civilization, and speakers of language no more know where it came from than babies know where they come from.

You and I who read and write books have very little effect upon language. We may think about it, write about it, and read about it, but it goes on without us, or in spite of us.

Language is a living thing. It must survive in men's minds and on their tongues if it survives at all.

Man can be defined, if one wishes, as a languag-ized mammal.

Quite naturally, scholars assumed that Latin grammar was not merely Latin grammar, but that it was grammar itself. They borrowed it and made the most of it.

Civilization could not exist until there was written language, because without written language no generation could bequeath to succeeding generations anything but its simpler findings.

Perfectionists are not all negative, miserable, unhappy and over controlling individuals

Hate is hostility.

We awaken in others the same attitude of mind we hold toward them.

For most people the prohibitions are a good thing. But If you are able to maintain very powerful states of mind, then you'll find yourself in everything you see.

Still for fun, I play the drums, but I don't do much recording with them.

First-rate people hire first-rate people; second-rate people hire third-rate people.

In love, we are best pleased when we please others.

North and South were equally confident that God was on their side, and appealed incessantly to Him.

Even when I was wrong, I got my point across.

If the world attacks and you slide off track, remember one fact, I got your back.