I start from the position that there is no answer to such simplifications of projects. No language is always the best tool (and, by extension, any advocacy that always pushes a certain language for all situations just shows everyone that it's just hype instead of valuable advice).

Well, indeed any quote like that, i.e. a witty remark, has no pretension of telling a Grand Truth(TM) -or, well, it not necessarily has- even if/when it is deliberately thought to sound as if it did. (And most certainly I don't expect it to.) Given that it is easy to agree with you on the fact that there is no answer to such simplifications, and this tells much about the value of the original question, I still think it clearly, concisely, wittily underlines one of the aspects involved in the matter: not certainly the only one, but possibly the "biggest", thus providing a gross, first order approximation.

So, the question of "Why should I use Perl?" almost answers it for you: if you don't know the trade-offs involved and you don't know what's more important to you, any answer is pretty much worthless because it's just a guess.

Nearly a witty quote too. Just slightly too verbose for my tastes. It's a sorta Zen thing: if you need to ask, then any answer is pretty much pointless.