Luis von Ahn Quotes

I co-founded Duolingo with the mission of bringing free language education to the world.

Because the world to-day is so constructed that no one can do what he would like to do, and he is forced, instead, to do what others wish him to do. Because the question of money always intrudes—into what we do, into what we are, into what we wish to become, into our work, into our highest aspirations, even into our relations with the people we love!

I started making my own beats because I just couldn't afford to pay for the other ones.

I'm happy in English studios. I just feel like there's no pressure anywhere.

From an economic perspective, women are treated unfairly: they perform 66 percent of the world's work and produce 50 percent of the food but they only earn 10 percent of the income and own 1 percent of the property.

I looked around the iTunes store and came across Dr. Moku's Hiragana Mnemonics. Thirty minutes later I had memorized all 46 hiragana. Now my 9-year-old is learning them, and having a lot of fun.

Philanthropy can be integrated into business. I believe strongly that companies can be incredible agents of good in the world.

The Mesh is reshaping how we go to market, who we partner with and how we invite participation and engage new customers. . . . If you embrace the Mesh youll discover how your business can inspire customers in a world where access trumps ownership.

Sydney: I like Latin. It's fun. Eddie: I can't believe you think we're the strange ones.

It is not like studying German, where you mull along, in a groping, uncertain way, for thirty years; and at last, just as you think you've got it, they spring the subjunctive on you, and there you are. No- and I see now plainly enough, that the great pity about the German language is, that you can't fall off it and hurt yourself. There is nothing like that feature to make you attend strictly to business.

When the whole world is crazy, it doesn't pay to be sane.

Tis pleasing to be school'd in a strange tongue By female lips and eyes--that is, I mean, When both the teacher and the taught are young, As was the case, at least, where I have been; They smile so when one's right; and when one's wrong They smile still more.

The immense value of becoming acquainted with a foreign language is that we are thereby led into a new world of tradition and thought and feeling.

I don't got that kind of money man, commercials only pay so much (inaudible).

You can't find me 20 children in Chicago, I don't care which section you go in - you can be on Michigan Avenue or here - and they won't be able to tell you that y is a vowel when it's the final syllable in a word, as in Nancy and icy. And no one bothers to teach the rules anymore - "i before e except after c."

See that your children are properly educated in the rudiments of their mother tongue, and then let them proceed to higher branches of learning.

If educators were really understanding of that, they'd say, "You know what? Forget about bilingual, we're going to do multilingual education." So children are ready for the new millennium. We're way behind compared to countries in Europe. If we were multilingual, imagine how much you would learn about your own culture, about the sensibilities of what's important in your own culture.

I've been on a plane before with more money in jewelry than my life insurance policy, and it's one of the scariest feelings in the world... if you lose it, you have to pay for it yourself, and you don't even get to keep it!

That whole 99% thing, they are all in the 1% of the world. Every one of them pays a cellphone bill that is the yearly income for a family in much of the rest of the world.

A refugee population is hungry for language and aware that anything can happen.

Grief is the price Love pays for being in the same world with Death.

Let the teachers learn the kids English. Ol' Diz will learn the kids baseball.

I don't understand German myself. I learned it at school, but forgot every word of it two years after I had left, and have felt much better ever since.

The globalized environment where speaking a lot of languages is rewarded and getting access to learning materials is easier. A talent for massive language learning has not been supported by the environment until very recently, so this is a phenomenon that is going to become more common and more visible.

My niece is - her name is Sasha, is currently learning Russian at Melbourne University and I look forward to the day when I can talk to her about Pushkin.