“The job of the linguist, like that of the biologist or the botanist, is not to tell us how nature should behave, or what its creations should look like, but to describe those creations in all their...”

“How many Lojbanists does it take to change a brokenlight-bulb? goes the old Lojban joke. Two: one to decidewhat to change it into and one to decide what kind of bulbemits broken light.”

“What kind of a world do we live in that has room for dog yoga but not for Esperanto?”

“How many Lojbanists does it take to change a brokenlight-bulb?” goes the old Lojban joke. “Two: one to decidewhat to change it into and one to decide what kind of bulbemits broken light.”

“We are looking for a tongue that speaks with reverence for life, searching for an ecology of mind. Without it, we have no home, no place of our own within the creation. It is not only the vocabular...”

“But Sasha was from Russia, where the sunsets are longer, the dawns less sudden and sentences are often left unfinished from doubt as how to best end them.”

“Why the Egyptian, Arabic, Abyssinian, Choctaw? Well, what tongue does the wind talk? What nationality is a storm? What country do rains come from? What color is lightning? Where does thunder goe wh...”

“Devising a vocabulary for gardening is like devising a vocabulary for sex. There are the correct Latin names, but most people invent euphemisms. Those who refer to plants by Latin name are consider...”

“Language disguises thought.”

“To speak a language is to take on a world, a culture.”