Matt Ridley: Trending quotes

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Matt Ridley: 130 quotes0 likes

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

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.”

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

“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)

“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)

“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)

“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)

“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)

“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)

“Judges were never very good at science.”

Matt Ridley book Genome

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

“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)

“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)

“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)

“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)

“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)

“Human beings accumulate about one hundred mutations per generation.”

Matt Ridley book Genome

Introduction (p. 10)
Genome (1999)