“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
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Matt Ridley 65
economist 1958Related quotes
Source: The Theory of Gambling and Statistical Logic (Revised Edition) 1977, Chapter Six, The Play Of The Cards, p. 158
“If the cards are stacked against you, reshuffle the deck.”
Part Two, Blackjack, More Trouble Than an $18 Dollar Whore, p. 96 (See Also: Stu Ungar Section; Blackjack)
Fortune's Formula (2005)
“I picked up my five cards from the next deal. “This ain’t a hand, it’s a foot.””
Source: Water Sleeps (1999), Chapter 10 (p. 48)
Josh Billings on Ice, and Other Things https://archive.org/details/joshbillingsoni00billgoog (1868), Chapter XXIV: "Perkussion Caps", p. 89; republished in The Complete Works of Josh Billings http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36556 (1876), Chapter 141: "Ods and Ens", p. 248. Often paraphrased as "Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well."
“Life is not always a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well.”
As quoted in Sacred Journey of the Peaceful Warrior (1991) by Dan Millman, p. 78
Life’s not a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes playing a poor hand well.
As quoted in "They Came to Write in Hawai‘i" by Joseph Theroux, in Spirit of Aloha (March/April 2007)