Chapter 41 (p. 215)

I have always dealt with economic forces, rather than philosophic forces, but you can’t split history into neat little nonoverlapping divisions. For instance, religions tend to accumulate wealth when successful and that eventually tends to distort the economic development of a society.

— Isaac Asimov

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "I have always dealt with economic forces, rather than philosophic forces, but you can’t split history into neat little nonoverlapping divisions. For instance, religions tend to accumulate wealth when successful and that eventually tends to distort the economic development of a society." in the context of "Chapter 41 (p. 215)" 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
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.