Flattery is useful when dealing with youngsters.
Interpretation
Flattery can be an effective tool for influencing and guiding young people.
Isaac Asimov's quote suggests that when interacting with children or young individuals, using flattery can be a beneficial approach. It implies that compliments or praise can help in gaining their trust and encouraging positive behaviors, as young minds are often more receptive to kind words. This tactic can foster a supportive environment conducive to learning and growth.
In practice
A teacher using compliments to encourage students to participate more in class.
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.
Without frustration you will not discover that you might be able to do something on your own. We grow through conflict.
Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.
To have striven, to have made the effort, to have been true to certain ideals - this alone is worth the struggle.
No stream rises higher than its source
Would all, who cherish such wild wishes, but look around them, they would oftenest find their sphere of duty, of prosperity, and happiness, within those precincts, and in that station where Providence itself has cast their lot. Happy they who read the riddle without a weary world-search, or a lifetime spent in vain!
It's the problem with age. You have all these rusty arguments, and no quarrel to use them in. My brain is a museum, but alas, I'm the only visitor, and even I am not terribly interested in the displays.
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