“Anyone who has tried to learn a foreign language knows only too dearly that languages can be full of pointless irregularities that increase complexity considerably without contributing much to the ability to express ideas. English, for instance, would have losed none of its expressive power if some of its verbs leaved their irregular past tense behind and becomed regular.”

“And if Germans do have systematic minds, this is just as likely to be because their exceedingly erratic mother tongue has exhausted their brains' capacity to cope with any further irregularity”

“The normal man of intelligence has something of a contempt for linguistic studies, convinced as he is nothing can well be more useless. Edward Sapir - 1924”

“No time to spare: the expression assumed its full significance, as so many expressions do in wartime.”

“To talk about paintings is not only difficult but perhaps pointless too. You can only express in words what words are capable of expressing-- what language can communicate. Painting has nothing to do with that.”

“Something of the previous state, however, survives every change. This is called in the language of cybernetics (which took it form the language of machines) feedback, the advantages of learning from experience and of having developed reflexes.”

“There’s a language, I think it’s called Mescalero, in which verbs don’t change tenses. There’s no future or past tense in that language. I was thinking… if we could learn that language, we could live longer…”