Three Sentences

Three sentences, from three different sources, each encountered in the course of a single day.

The first:

"The endless struggle of statesmen [is] to rescue some permanence from the tenuousness of human foresight."

-Henry Kissinger

The second:

"[This book is] one more attempt to freeze the flux of life into the icy permanence of print."

-John Updike

But then, the third:

"The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor yet does bread come to the wise, nor riches to the discerning, nor favor to the learned, but time and chance happen to them all."

-Ecclesiastes 9:11


Is the third a rebuke to the first two?  I don't know, I can't figure it out.  I've been thinking about it for hours...