“A man can go along obeying all the rules and then it don’t matter a damn anymore.”

Variant: If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun

Source: Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't

§ 219
Philosophical Investigations (1953)

Environmentalism as a Religion (2003)
Context: The notion that the natural world obeys its own rules and doesn't give a damn about your expectations comes as a massive shock... it will demand that you adapt to it — and if you don't, you die. It is a harsh, powerful, and unforgiving world, that most urban westerners have never experienced.

p 44
Wonderful, Wonderful Times (1990)

Source: Night Embrace

Adversity not slowing Urlacher's meteoric rise, English http://www.chicagobears.com/news/NewsStory.asp?story_id=2603,

After being dubbed "overrated".

The Other World (1657)
Context: You are amazed that matter can form a man when matter is all mixed up at random and so many things go into making a person. But do you not realize that before matter forms someone it has also stopped along the way to make a stone, lead, coral, a flower, or a comet because there was too much or too little of it to make a human being? No wonder, then, that an infinite amount of incessantly moving and changing matter makes up the few animals, vegetables and minerals that we see. No wonder, either, that if you throw dice a hundred times, they will all show the same numbers at some point.
This movement of matter, then, could not fail to produce something, and whatever it is will always be admired by the unthinking person who does not realize how close it came to not being made.

Source: Wintergirls