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Matt Ridley Quotes

Matthew White Ridley, 5th Viscount Ridley is a British journalist and businessman. Ridley is best known for his writings on science, the environment, and economics. He has written several science books including The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature , Genome , The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves and The Evolution of Everything: How Ideas Emerge . He publishes a blog, and has been a regular contributor to The Times newspaper.

Ridley is a libertarian, and a staunch supporter of Brexit. Since 2013, he has been a Conservative hereditary peer, with a seat in the House of Lords.Ridley was chairman of the UK bank Northern Rock from 2004 to 2007, during which period Northern Rock experienced the first run on a British bank in 150 years. Ridley resigned and the bank was bailed out by the UK government leading to the nationalisation of Northern Rock. Wikipedia  

✵ 7. February 1958   •   Other names 马特·里德利, 馬特·里德利
Matt Ridley photo

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Famous Matt Ridley Quotes

“Life is a Sisyphean race, run ever faster towards a finishing line that is merely the start of the next race.”

Matt Ridley book The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature

Source: The Red Queen (1993), Ch. 5
Source: The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature

“A true scientist is bored by knowledge; it is the assault on ignorance that motivates him - the mysteries that previous discoveries have revealed.”

Matt Ridley

Source: Genome: the Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters

“Evolution does not lead to Utopia. It leads to a land in which what is best for a man may be worst for another man, or what is best for a woman may be worst for a man.”

Matt Ridley

Source: The Red Queen (1993), Ch. 6

“One of the peculiar features of history is that time always erodes advantage. Every invention sooner or later erodes advantage. Every invention sooner or later leads to a counter-invention.”

Matt Ridley

Source: The Red Queen (1993), Ch. 1. Human Nature

“In chess or in football, the tactic that proves most effective is soon the one that people learn easily to block. Every innovation in attack is soon countered by another in defence.”

Matt Ridley

Source: The Red Queen (1993), Ch. 3

“It is no harder to explain than a game of cards. There are aces and kings and twos and threes in any deck of cards. A lucky player is dealt a high-scoring hand, but none of his cards is unique. Elsewhere in the room are others with the same kinds of cards in their hands. But even with just thirteen kinds of cards, every hand is different and some are spectacularly better than others. Sex is merely the dealer, generating unique hands from the same monotonous deck of genetic cards shared by the whole species.”

Matt Ridley

Source: The Red Queen (1993), Ch. 1. Human Nature

Matt Ridley: Trending quotes

“Wealth and power are means to women; women are means to genetic eternity.”

Matt Ridley

Source: The Red Queen (1993), Ch. 7

Women , Wealth

“Females choose; their choosiness is inherited; they prefer exaggerated ornaments; exaggerated ornaments are a burden to males.”

Matt Ridley

Source: The Red Queen (1993), Ch. 5

“…compare mankind with other animals that share our highly social habits: with colonial birds, monkeys and dolphins. As we shall see, the lesson they teach is that we are designed for a system of monogamy plagued by adultery.”

Matt Ridley

Source: The Red Queen (1993), Ch. 5

Bird , Animals

Matt Ridley Quotes

“Nicholas Humphrey, a Cambridge psychologist, was the first to see clearly the solution to this puzzle. We use our intellects not to solve practical problems, but to outwit each other. Deceiving people, detecting deceit, understanding people's motives, manipulating people -these are what the intellect is used for. So what matters is not how clever and crafty you are, but how much cleverer and craftier than other people. The value of intellect is infinite. Selection within the species is always going to be more important than selection between the species.”

Matt Ridley

Source: The Red Queen (1993), Ch. 2. The Enigma

People , Motivation , Understanding , Problem

“…the males best at seduction tend to be the best at other things as well.”

Matt Ridley

Source: The Red Queen (1993), Ch. 5

“Reproducing sexually must improve an individual´s reproductive success or else sex would not persist… It is increasingly hard to understand how human beings came to be so clever without considering sexual competition.”

Matt Ridley

Source: The Red Queen (1993), Ch. 1. Human Nature

Sex , Understanding , Success

“…nobody has told the coelancath, a fish that lives off Madagascar and looks exactly like its ancestors of 300 million years ago, that it has broken some law by not evolving.”

Matt Ridley

Source: The Red Queen (1993), Ch. 2. The Enigma

Law , Fish

“When a neo-Darwinian asks 'Why?' he is really asking 'How did this come about?”

Matt Ridley

He is a historian.
Source: The Red Queen (1993), Ch. 1. Human Nature

“The idea that we were designed by our past was the principal insight of Charles Darwin. He was the first to realize that you can abandon divine creation of species without abandoning the argument from design.”

Matt Ridley

Source: The Red Queen (1993), Ch. 1. Human Nature

Idea , Past

“It is sometimes hard even for biologists to remember that sex is merely a genetic joint venture.”

Matt Ridley

Source: The Red Queen (1993), Ch. 3

Sex

“Such 'habituation´is just a property of the way brains work; our senses, and those of grackles, notice novelty and change, not steady states. The female preference did not evolve: it just is that way.”

Matt Ridley

Source: The Red Queen (1993), Ch. 5

Way , Sense , Change

“I asked John Maynard Smith, one of the first people to pose the question 'Why sex?', whether he still thought some new explanation was needed. 'No. We have the answers. We cannot agree on them, that is all.”

Matt Ridley

Source: The Red Queen (1993), Ch. 2. The Enigma

People , Sex , Question

“Everything can be inherited except sterility.”

Matt Ridley

Source: The Red Queen (1993), Ch. 1. Human Nature

“Therefore, broadly speaking, males invest less and seek quantity of mates, while females invest more and seek quality of mates.”

Matt Ridley

Source: The Red Queen (1993), Ch. 3

“He (Thomas Ray) had discovered that the notion of a host-parasite arms race is one of the most basic and unavoidable consequences of evolution.”

Matt Ridley

Source: The Red Queen (1993), Ch. 3

“As every bird-watcher knows, the beauty of a bird's song is inversely correlated with the colourfulness of its plumage.”

Matt Ridley

Source: The Red Queen (1993), Ch. 5

Beauty , Bird

“The longer your generation time, the more genetic mixing you need to combat your parasite.”

Matt Ridley

Source: The Red Queen (1993), Ch. 3

Time

“…then the study of human nature must have profound implications for the study of history, sociology, psychology, anthropology, and politics. Each of those disciplines is an attempt to understand human behaviour, and if the underlying universals of human behaviour are product of evolution, then it is vitally important to understand what the evolutionary pressures were.”

Matt Ridley

Source: The Red Queen (1993), Ch. 1. Human Nature

History , Understanding , Nature , Study

“…conditioning usually reinforces instinct rather than overrides it.”

Matt Ridley

Source: The Red Queen (1993), Ch. 6

“In behavior, as in appearance, every human individual is unique.”

Matt Ridley

Source: The Red Queen (1993), Ch. 1. Human Nature

Behavior , Appearance

“In history, and in evolution, progress is always a futile, Sisyphean struggle to stay in the same relative place by getting ever better at things. Cars move through the congested streets of London no faster than horse-drawn carriages.”

Matt Ridley

Source: The Red Queen (1993), Ch. 1. Human Nature

Cars , History , Horse

“As one of Kondrashov's critics put it, sex is a 'cumbersome strange tool to have evolved fro a housekeeping role”

Matt Ridley

Source: The Red Queen (1993), Ch. 3

Sex

“Evolution is more about reproduction of the fittest than survival of the fittest; every creature on earth is the product of a series of historical battles between parasites and hosts, between genes and other genes, between members of the same species, between members of one gender in competitions for members of the other gender.”

Matt Ridley

Source: The Red Queen (1993), Ch. 5

“Advertising works. Brand names are better known if advertised with sexy or alluring pictures, and better-known brands sell better. Why does it work? Because the price the consumer would have to pay in ignoring the subliminal message is just to high. Better to be fooled into buying the second best ice-cream than go to all the bother of educating yourself into the ability to resist salesmen.”

Matt Ridley

Source: The Red Queen (1993), Ch. 5

Education , Fools

“Computer viruses have since become a worldwide problem. It begins to look as if parasites are inevitable in any system of life.”

Matt Ridley

Source: The Red Queen (1993), Ch. 3

Life , Problem

“People are attracted to people of high reproductive and genetic potential -the healthy, the fit and the powerful. The consequences of this fact, which goes under the name of sexual selection, are bizarre in the extreme.”

Matt Ridley

Source: The Red Queen (1993), Ch. 1. Human Nature

People

“Evolving is not a goal but a means to solving a problem.”

Matt Ridley

Source: The Red Queen (1993), Ch. 2. The Enigma

Problem

“So sex equals genetic mixing.”

Matt Ridley

Source: The Red Queen (1993), Ch. 2. The Enigma

Sex

“Determinism looks backwards to the causes of the present state, not forward to the consequences.”

Matt Ridley book Genome

Source: Genome (1999), Chapter 22 “Free Will” (p. 307)

“The main purpose of most genes in the human genome is regulating the expression of other genes in the genome.”

Matt Ridley book Genome

Source: Genome (1999), Chapter 10 “Stress” (p. 150)

“Nobody doubts that genes can shape anatomy. The idea that they also shape behaviour takes a lot more swallowing.”

Matt Ridley book Genome

Source: Genome (1999), Chapter 7 “Instinct” (p. 91)

Idea

“That life is chemistry is true but boring, like saying that football is physics.”

Matt Ridley book Genome

Source: Genome (1999), Chapter 1 “Life” (p. 15)

Football , Life

“Life is a slippery thing to define, but it consists of two very different skills: the ability to replicate, and the ability to create order.”

Matt Ridley book Genome

Source: Genome (1999), Chapter 1 “Life” (p. 12)

Life

“Freedom lies in expressing your own determinism, not somebody else’s. It is not the determinism that makes a difference, but the ownership. If freedom is what we prefer, then it is preferable to be determined by forces that originate in ourselves and not in others.”

Matt Ridley book Genome

Source: Genome (1999), Chapter 22 “Free Will” (p. 313)

Freedom

“This interaction of genetic and external influences makes my behaviour unpredictable, but not undetermined.”

Matt Ridley book Genome

Source: Genome (1999), Chapter 22 “Free Will” (p. 312)

“Yet the myth persists that genetic determinism is a more implacable kind of fate than social determinism.”

Matt Ridley book Genome

Source: Genome (1999), Chapter 22 “Free Will” (p. 308)

Fate

“The fuel on which science runs is ignorance. Science is like a hungry furnace that must be fed logs from the forests of ignorance that surround us. In the process, the clearing we call knowledge expands, but the more it expands, the longer its perimeter and the more ignorance comes into view.”

Matt Ridley book Genome

Source: Genome (1999), Chapter 20 “Politics” (p. 271)

Science , Knowledge

“The politicisation of the issue has had absurd results.”

Matt Ridley book Genome

Source: Genome (1999), Chapter 18 “Cures” (p. 253; referring to genetic engineering)

“Just as we underestimate the degree to which human brains rely upon instincts, so we have generally underestimated the degree to which other animals are capable of learning.”

Matt Ridley book Genome

Source: Genome (1999), Chapter 16 “Memory” (p. 222)

Learning , Animals

“The subject of learning lies in the provinces of neuroscience and psychology. It is the opposite of instinct. Instinct is generically-determined behaviour; learning is behaviour modified by experience.”

Matt Ridley book Genome

Source: Genome (1999), Chapter 16 “Memory” (p. 220)

Learning

“Natural selection has designed all parts of our bodies to last just long enough to see our children into independence, no more.”

Matt Ridley book Genome

Source: Genome (1999), Chapter 14 “Immortality” (p. 202)

Children , Nature , Parting

“These two processes—linguistic philology and genetic phylogeny—are converging upon a common theme: the history of human migrations.”

Matt Ridley book Genome

Source: Genome (1999), Chapter 13 “Pre-History” (p. 185)

History

“It underscores yet again the fact that what we call personality is to a considerable degree a question of brain chemistry.”

Matt Ridley book Genome

Source: Genome (1999), Chapter 11 “Personality” (p. 172)

Question , Personality

“Judges were never very good at science.”

Matt Ridley book Genome

Source: Genome (1999), Chapter 9 “Disease” (p. 136)

Science

“Genes do indeed behave as if they have selfish goals, not consciously, but retrospectively: genes that behave in this way thrive and genes that don’t don’t.”

Matt Ridley book Genome

Source: Genome (1999), Chapter 8 “Self-Interest” (p. 128)

Selfishness , Way

“If you still thought evolution was about the good of the species, stop thinking so right now.”

Matt Ridley book Genome

Source: Genome (1999), Chapter X and Y “Conflict” (p. 113)

Thinking

“In egalitarian societies, genes matter more.”

Matt Ridley book Genome

Source: Genome (1999), Chapter 6 “Intelligence” (p. 86)

“No study of the causes of intelligence has failed to find a substantial heritability.”

Matt Ridley book Genome

Source: Genome (1999), Chapter 6 “Intelligence” (p. 82)

Study , Intelligence

“Genes are recipes for both anatomy and behaviour.”

Matt Ridley book Genome

Source: Genome (1999), Chapter 2 “Species” (p. 37)

“In other words, a record of our past is etched into our genes.”

Matt Ridley book Genome

Source: Genome (1999), Chapter 2 “Species” (p. 35)

Past

“Human beings are of course unique. They have, perched between their ears, the most complicated biological machine on the planet. But complexity is not everything, and it is not the goal of evolution. Every species on the planet is unique. Uniqueness is a commodity in oversupply.”

Matt Ridley book Genome

Source: Genome (1999), Chapter 2 “Species” (p. 25)

“The pope notwithstanding, the human species is by no means the pinnacle of evolution. Evolution has no pinnacle and there is no such thing as evolutionary progress.”

Matt Ridley book Genome

Source: Genome (1999), Chapter 2 “Species” (p. 24)

“Life consists of the interplay of two kinds of chemicals: proteins and DNA.”

Matt Ridley book Genome

Source: Genome (1999), Chapter 1 “Life” (p. 17)

Life

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