What I’m getting at is that Zamenhof not only built a linguistic object, but that behind that was an idea — an idea of brotherhood, a pacifist idea. That strength of an ideal — for which Esperantists were even persecuted under Nazism and Stalinism — is still conserved by the community of Esperantists. One cannot say that it has failed, but one thing needs to be said: the reason why any language is successful is always indefinable.

Source: Tatoeba