Matt Ridley: Genetics

Matt Ridley is economist. Explore interesting quotes on genetics.

Matt Ridley: 130 quotes0 likes

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

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

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

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.”

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

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

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

“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.”

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

“So sex equals genetic mixing.”

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

“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)

“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)

“I think knowledge is a blessing, not a curse. This is especially true in the case of genetic knowledge.”

Matt Ridley book Genome

Foreward (p. 3)
Genome (1999)