“Yes, but soldiers who are well-paid would resent having that pay reduced just because there is peace. Admirals resist mothballing ships and having themselves reduced in rank simply because there is less for them to do. So the credits still go—unproductively—to the armed forces and vital areas of the social good are allowed to deteriorate. That’s what I call decay. Don’t you?”" - Meaning and context.">
QuotesCosmos
Chapter 14 (p. 71)
“

“But it’s been quiet under Cleon. And we’ve had fifty years of peace.”
“Yes, but soldiers who are well-paid would resent having that pay reduced just because there is peace. Admirals resist mothballing ships and having themselves reduced in rank simply because there is less for them to do. So the credits still go—unproductively—to the armed forces and vital areas of the social good are allowed to deteriorate. That’s what I call decay. Don’t you?”

— Isaac Asimov

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "“But it’s been quiet under Cleon. And we’ve had fifty years of peace.”
“Yes, but soldiers who are well-paid would resent having that pay reduced just because there is peace. Admirals resist mothballing ships and having themselves reduced in rank simply because there is less for them to do. So the credits still go—unproductively—to the armed forces and vital areas of the social good are allowed to deteriorate. That’s what I call decay. Don’t you?”" in the context of "Chapter 14 (p. 71)" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

Source: Wikiquote: "Isaac Asimov" (Quotes, The Foundation series (1951–1993): The earliest eight Foundation short stories were published between May 1942 and January 1950, but these began to be reworked into the novels of the overall series in 1951., Prelude to Foundation (1988): All page numbers from the mass market edition published by Bantam Spectra in September 2004, , (29th printing) Italics and ellipsis as in the book ) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app

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Isaac Asimov

About Isaac Asimov

Isaac Asimov (c. 2 January 1920 – 6 April 1992) was a Russian-born American biochemist who was a prolific writer of both fiction and non-fiction, his works include the Foundation series and I, Robot.