An excellent plumber is infinitely more admirable than an incompetent philosopher. The society that scorns excellence in plumbing just because plumbing is a humble activity, and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity, will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its philosophy will hold water. It then appears that we are among the privileged. Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once.
Success is simply a matter of luck.
Ask any failure. They fired him. They replaced him with a gadget this big. It does everything that my father does, only it does it much better. The depressing thing is my mother ran out and bought one.