It is not only the living who are killed in war.
Interpretation
War affects not just those who die but also the living who endure its consequences.
Isaac Asimov's quote highlights the profound and lasting impact of war on individuals and society, suggesting that the repercussions of conflict extend beyond immediate casualties. It draws attention to the psychological, emotional, and social toll that war takes on survivors, emphasizing that the scars of violence endure long after the fighting has ceased.
In practice
During a memorial speech, one might reflect on the broader implications of conflict and use this quote to provoke thought.
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.
The work an unknown good man has done is like a vein of water flowing hidden underground, secretly making the ground green.
Men do not mirror themselves in running water - they mirror themselves in still water. Only what is still can still the stillness of other things.
What else can I do? Once you've gone this far you aren't fit for anything else. Something happens to your mind. You're overqualified, overspecialized, and everybody knows it. Nobody in any other game would be crazy enough to hire me. I wouldn't even make a good ditch-digger, I'd start tearing apart the sewer-system, trying to pick-axe and unearth all those chthonic symbols - pipes, valves, cloacal conduits... No, no. I'll have to be a slave in the paper-mines for all time.
Everything in excess is opposed to nature.
Critics have done the wine industry a lot of good overall.
Huts they made then, and fire, and skins for clothing, And a woman yielded to one man in wedlock... ... Common, to see the offspring they had made; The human race began to mellow then. Because of fire their shivering forms no longer Could bear the cold beneath the covering sky.
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