In life, unlike chess, the game continues after checkmate.
Interpretation
Life continues beyond defeats or endings, unlike the finality in chess.
Isaac Asimov highlights the difference between life and chess by emphasizing that, in life, setbacks or apparent 'endings' are not final; we continue to play and find new possibilities, growth, and opportunities even after significant challenges or losses. This perspective encourages resilience and adaptability in the face of adversity.
In practice
During a motivational speech about facing challenges and moving forward after failures.
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.
For it is really better for us not to know a thing, because [God] has not revealed it to us, than to know it according to manβs wisdom, because he has been bold enough to assume it.
A man's ethical behaviour should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.
Passion must be concealed in a society where cold reserve and indifference are the signs of good breeding.
In this world, there is a kind of painful progress. Longing for what we've left behind, and dreaming ahead.
All the dark, intricate, puzzling providences at which we were sometimes so offended...we shall [one day] see to be to us, as the difficult passage through the wilderness was to Israel, "the right way to the city of habitation".
Be yourself and think for yourself, and while your conclusions may not be infallible they will be nearer right than the inclusions forced upon you by those who have a personal interest in keeping you in ignorance.
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