"The oil tycoon J. Paul Getty was rumoured to have said that his three rules for how to become rich were: Rise early. Work hard. Strike oil. It's one of those eminently quotable remarks because it captures something we all know to be true, that luck and chance have as much to do with success as anything else. Yet we don't value people for their luck."
"That is the nature of what the French writer Albert Camus called existential rebellion. It is through our own efforts and actions that we find meaning in an indifferent universe, even if the rewards for those efforts have a significant random element. Believing in luck, then, is itself an act of defiance. To work, to strive, to build skill in such a world is not naïveté but rebellion."
"Although we remember him as an icon today, for a long time, Albert Einstein wasn't very popular, or even well liked, in the early twentieth century. He was German in the wake of World War I, Jewish in an age of heightened anti-Semitism, and so seemingly aloof and full of himself that he claimed that only a handful of people on earth could understand his strange theories."
J. Paul Getty's reputed rules—Rise early. Work hard. Strike oil—illustrate how luck and chance shape success. Society typically refrains from valuing pure luck and instead praises talent, skill, and dedication. Individuals can control effort and the cultivation of abilities even though outcomes retain a large random element. Albert Camus characterized committed striving amid an indifferent world as existential rebellion, where work and skill-building amount to defiance. Albert Einstein initially faced unpopularity due to nationality, religion, and perceived aloofness. A sudden, enthusiastic reception in America on April 3, 1921, rapidly transformed public perception and elevated his celebrity.
Read at Fast Company
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