"We call these events [mutations] accidental; we say that they are random occurrences. And since they constitute the only possible source of modifications in the genetic text, itself the sole repository of the organism's hereditary structures, it necessarily follows that chance alone is at the source of every innovation, of all creation in the biosphere. Pure chance, absolutely free but blind, at the very root of the stupendous edifice of evolution. . . Nothing warrants the supposition--or hope--that on this score our position is likely ever to be revised."

Jacques Monod, "Chance and Necessity" New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971), pp. 112 - 113