"Whether Arabic possesses all those merits which are being so bountifully bestowed upon it by its zealous defenders is a matter of personal bias and, to a certain degree, even an academic topic. What remains certain is that, in a way, it is a privileged language. It has lived for one millennium and a half essentially unchanged, usually gaining, never completely losing. Venus-like, it was born in a perfect state of beauty, and it has preserved that beauty in spite of all the hazards of history and all the corrosive forces of time. It is true that there was not always that Praxitelean limpidity of line about it. Figuratively speaking, it has known its Gothic, its Renaissance and its Baroque periods. It has known austerity, holy ecstasy and voluptuousness, bloom and decadence. It exuberated in times of splendor and persisted through times of adversity in a state of near-hibernation. But when it awoke again, it was the same language. The fact that Arabic long survived and still had the vitality to burgeon a new might be due to religious and social factors, but the quantitative ability to expand and the qualitative capacity to attain perfection and to maintain its essential characteristics are merits of the language exclusively."
Jaroslav Stetkevych, an emeritus professor of Arabic at the University of Chicago
