The great arbiters of language are the women who speak it in the presence of children... What the women pass on to the next generation is "right" and what they do not bother to pass on to their children sooner or later becomes "wrong.

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

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.

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

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.

An amoeba is a formless thing which takes many shapes. It moves by thrusting out an arm, and flowing into the arm. It multiplies by pulling itself in two, without permanently diminishing the original. So with words. A meaning may develop on the periphery of the body of meanings associated with a word, and shortly this tentacle-meaning has grown to such proportions that it dwarfs all other meanings.

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.