It was childish to feel disappointed, but childishness comes almost as naturally to a man as to a child.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the natural human tendency to feel disappointment, likening it to childish behavior that persists into adulthood.
Isaac Asimov highlights the idea that disappointment is a universal emotion that can affect people of all ages, suggesting that even adults experience feelings often associated with children. This commentary serves to remind us that emotional responses can be a fundamental part of being human, regardless of our maturity or age.
In practice
In a speech about embracing our emotions, this quote could serve as a reminder that it's natural to feel disappointment.
Democracy cannot survive overpopulation. Human dignity cannot survive it. Convenience and decency cannot survive it. As you put more and more people into the world, the value of life not only declines, but it disappears. It doesn't matter if someone dies.
Science does not promise absolute truth, nor does it consider that such a thing necessarily exists. Science does not even promise that everything in the Universe is amenable to the scientific process.
Democracy cannot survive overpopulation.
Although the time of death is approaching me, I am not afraid of dying and going to Hell or (what would be considerably worse) going to the popularized version of Heaven. I expect death to be nothingness and, for removing me from all possible fears of death, I am thankful to atheism.
A subtle thought that is in error may yet give rise to fruitful inquiry that can establish truths of great value.
During the century after Newton, it was still possible for a man of unusual attainments to master all fields of scientific knowledge. But by 1800, this had become entirely impracticable.
Crime generally punishes itself.
America is an unsolvable problem: a nation divided and deeply in hate with itself. If it was a startup, we'd understand how unfixable the situation is; most of us would leave for a fresh start, and the company would fall apart. America is MySpace.
We create institutions and policies on the basis of the way we make assumptions about us and others. We accept the fact that we will always have poor people around us. So we have had poor people around us. If we had believed that poverty is unacceptable to us, and that it should not belong to a civilized society, we would have created appropriate institutions and policies to create a poverty-free world.
Its name-what passes not away.
I kept having dreams all night. I thought they were touching me with their fingers. But dreams don't have fingers, they have fists, so it must have been scorpions.
Botvinnik tried to take the mystery out of Chess, always relating it to situations in ordinary life. He used to call chess a typical inexact problem similar to those which people are always having to solve in everyday life.
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