Quote: Heinlein "Time Enough for Love"

"If I must wait a thousand years to understand that word," Hamadryad replied, "then I probably never will. Minerva says that it cannot be defined in Galacta and even when I speak Classic English, I find that I think in Galacta, which means that I do not really grasp English. Since the word love' occurs so frequently in ancient English literature, I thought my failure to understand that word might be the block that keeps me from thinking in English." "Well, let's shift to Galacta and take a swing at it. In the first place, very little thinking was ever done in English; it is not a language suited to logical thought. Instead, it's an emotive lingo beautifully adapted to concealing fallacies. A rationalizing language, not a rational one. But most people who spoke English had no more idea of the meaning of the word 'love' than you have, even though they used it all the time."

Heinlein, Time Enough for Love, p. 120