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 wi…

- Charlton Laird

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…

- Charlton Laird

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

- Charlton Laird

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 wor…

- Charlton Laird

Civilization could not exist until there was written language, because without written language no generation could bequeath to succeeding generation…

- Charlton Laird

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.

- Charlton Laird

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

- Charlton Laird

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

- Charlton Laird

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

- Charlton Laird