Part V, The Merchant Princes, section 2; originally published as “The Big and the Little” in Astounding (August 1944)
“
The whole business is the crudest sort of stratagem, since we have no way of foreseeing it to the end. It is a mere paying out of rope on the chance that somewhere along the length of it will be a noose.
— Isaac Asimov
What It Means
This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "The whole business is the crudest sort of stratagem, since we have no way of foreseeing it to the end. It is a mere paying out of rope on the chance that somewhere along the length of it will be a noose." in the context of "Part V, The Merchant Princes, section 2; originally published as “The Big and the Little” in Astounding (August 1944)" 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., Foundation (1951): Four of the stories in this work were originally published with different titles in Astounding Magazine between 1942 and 1944, and the fifth was added when they first appeared in book form in 1951. )
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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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.
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.
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