Well Ernie, it's a much quoted saying, but I suspect Cartier-Bresson and certainly I, was saying it with tongue in cheek or with some irony. I think the main point was that skillfully creating images using a dedicated camera, especially in the era of Cartier-Bresson, required the learning of all the skills I mentioned, plus a lot of practice.
Considering one of his most famous images, and likely the icon for his catch-phrase 'the decisive moment', his image "Outside la Gare" is an exemplar of the skills - the right shutter speed, aperture, focus, and above all, the anticipation of the right moment to freeze the subject's foot just before it splashed down. Considering he was using an early Leica camera - so manual configuration, no motor drive or even fast film advance level - his was the essential one-chance, one-shot world that you and I, who grew up with film, can relate to.
Practise is more about the pure manipulation of the camera itself. As one of my favourite photographers, the now sadly late Elliott Erwitt said "All the technique in the world doesn’t compensate for the ability to notice". He photographed a huge range from presidents to poodles, but his images were consistently engaging and often humorous.
The lately-recognized Vivian Maier was an outstanding photographer, with an amazing ability to get close to her subjects, get the verticals correct, the exposure, focus and the composition correct and achieve an outstanding keeper rate, considering she was most of the time using a square format Rolleiflex twin lens reflex camera fully manually controlled - recognized as one of the most challenging formats. According to a couple of academics who have studied her work extensively, out of a roll of 12 images, she would often score above ten outstanding ones. To them, and me, that is hugely impressive. See: Vivian Maier Presentation at Berkeley, April 2, 2014 (youtube.com) This is discussed by them at timestamp 32:20.
Definitely, it's far more than the gear.
