Of course there must be something to be developed-and luck, that is to say, the unknowable and unforeseeable, enters everywhere; but is it more convenient with our oldest and best-established ideas to say that luck is the main means of the development of capital, or that cunning is so?
"Luck or Cunning?"
Samuel Butler
But the plight of this doctor would be nothing to the plight of the chemist or the biologist or the engineer who was asked to do his thinking and his planning in a world containing a billion and a quarter human beings, each one a lawless agent, each one a source of new and unforeseeable energies, each one acting as a "first cause," and starting new chains of activity, tearing the universe to pieces according to his own whims.
"The Book of Life: Vol. I Mind and Body; Vol. II Love and Society"
Upton Sinclair
Before such extreme conditions are reached, however, by a ship or a fleet, many other factors than merely relative force come into play; primarily, man, with all that his personality implies-skill, courage, discipline,-after that, chance, opportunity, accidents of time, accidents of place, accidents of ground,-the whole unforeseeable chapter of incidents which go to form military history.
"Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles"
Alfred T. Mahan