On Chance (BC)

"No human being will ever know the Truth, for even if they happen to say it by chance, they would not even known they had done so." (Xenophanes, 5th century BC)

"The art of war teaches us to rely not on the likelihood of the enemy's not coming, but on our own readiness to receive him; not on the chance of his not attacking, but rather on the fact that we have made our position unassailable." (Sun Tzu, "The Art of War", cca. 5th century BC)

"[...] the freaks of chance are not determinable by calculation." (Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, cca. 5th century)

"Everything existing in the universe is the fruit of chance." (Democritus, 4th century BC)

"All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire." (Aristotle, 4th century BC)

"Chance seldom interferes with the wise man; his greatest and highest interests have been, are, and will be, directed by reason throughout his whole life." (Epicurus, cca. 4th century)

"Thus all the action of men must necessarily be referred to seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, anger, and desire." (Aristotle, "The Art of Rhetoric", 4th century BC)

"They say that the greatest and fairest things are the work of nature and of chance, the lesser of art, which, receiving from nature the greater and primeval creations, molds and fashions all those lesser works which are generally termed artificial." (Plato, "Nomoi" ["Laws"], cca. 360 BC)

"Everything that depends on the action of nature is by nature as good as it can be, and similarly everything that depends on art or any rational cause, and especially if it depends on the best of all causes. To entrust to chance what is greatest and most noble would be a very defective arrangement." (Aristotle, "Nicomachean Ethics", cca. 350 BC)


"How often things occur by mere chance which we dared not even hope for." (Publius Terentius Afer, "Phormio", cca. 161 BC)

"Suam habet fortuna rationem.’
"Chance has its reasons." (Gaius Petronius, "Satryicon liber" ["The Book of Satyrlike Adventures"], 1st century BC)

"Valor is of no service, chance rules all, and the bravest often fall by the hands of cowards." (Cornelius Tacitus, cca. 69-100 AD)

"But things that happen by chance cannot be certain." (Marcus T Cicero, "De Divinatione", cca 44 BC)

"Chance joins with force to guide the steel." (Virgil, "Aeneid", cca. 29–19 BC)