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The day is past when schools could afford to give sufficient time and attention to the teaching of the ancient languages to enable the student to get that enjoyment out of classical literature that made the lives of our grandfathers so rich.

My father made me take three years of Latin in high school.

Although reading the classics in Latin in school may be not as fulfilling as it would be at a more mature age, few scientists can afford the time for such diversion later in life.

I studied Latin in high school, and I was reading stuff from Cicero. And that signal took a few thousand years to get to me. But I was still interested in what he had to say.

If the Romans had been obliged to learn Latin, they would never have found time to conquer the world.

I'm the kid that tried to take Latin in school because I felt if I could understand the root of everything, then I could understand why it worked. That was what took me into engineering. And the reason I stayed is, engineering teaches you to solve problems. It teaches you to think.

I had a Latin master who, for no rational reason whatsoever - I was a very quiet kid at school - just hated me.

Somebody told me once I wasn't Latin enough, and that made me laugh.

A little part of my life is built around ancient art.

My education started with Latin taught at home by a governess, I can't imagine why, and for some reason I attended the Infants Department of the Oxford High School for Girls before moving to the Dragon School at the dangerous age of 8 or so.