"I have no knowledge of either Sanscrit or Arabic. But I have done what I could to form a correct estimate of their value. I have read translations of the most celebrated Arabic and Sanscrit works. I have conversed both here and at home with men distinguished by their proficiency in the Eastern tongues. I am quite ready to take the Oriental learning at the valuation of the Orientalists themselves. I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia. The question now before us is simply whether, when it is in our power to teach this language, we shall teach languages in which, by universal confession, there is no books on any subject which deserve to be compared to what we have in English."

Thomas Babington Macaulay, Minute on Indian Education, 2 February 1835. Macaulay was Law Member of the Governor-General's Council in India. His Minute persuaded Governor-General Lord Bentinck to switch government education funding from Arabic and Sanskrit to English-medium instruction.