At an assembly where a young man asked to switch to Yiddish "because speaking Hebrew is hard for him," AZR recalled the parable of the Rebbe of Apta and the peasant whose cart had sunk in the mud ("You are able, my friend; you simply do not want to"). His conclusion:
"One must truly want to… and then you will want in Hebrew, and want well, and even if there are some flaws in the delivery, the essential will not be missing. For the essence of essences is establishing the dominion of the language… it is hard, hard, but with the will comes also the ability." AZR, "On the Question of the Language," "Kuntres," Adar 5681 (1921); Project Ben-Yehuda.
And when the immigrants of the Diaspora see that "the inhabitants of the Land of Israel truly love their language and give their lives for it," they too will make the effort, "to build up the wastelands of our land and to revive also the wastelands of our language."
In the essay "The Language of Israel" AZR presents Hebrew as an eternal light and as holiness:
"The Hebrew language is an eternal light; it has illuminated our path from the days of Abraham our father until today… our language was for us not merely a utilitarian tool… but was for us, in and of itself, a precious treasure — the holy tongue." AZR, "The Language of Israel," "Collected Writings"; Project Ben-Yehuda.
Against those who declared the death of Hebrew, AZR brings a biting parable of an army officer counting the fallen: "I did not die!" cries the wounded man, and the officer replies, "Silence, fool! The authorities know better than you." And so, in his view, acted the Soviet authorities (Lunacharsky and the Yevsektsiya) who declared the death of Hebrew. His answer:
"Many gravediggers rise up against us in every generation and rule: the Hebrew people is dead, the Hebrew language is dead — and we go on living in spite of them, full of hope to renew our days as of old." Ibid. (Context: the suppression of Hebrew in the USSR in the 1920s by the "Yevsektsiya.")