I started out wanting to be a naturalist. My obsession in my youth was with bird-watching. I collected things, I spent a lot of time outdoors. I only vaguely realized that science was a little more than natural history, but… — Matt Ridley Copy Share Image
I felt cheated by the way grown-ups told me that the future of the world was bleak when I became a teenager in the… — Matt Ridley Copy Share Image
“If you attend a meeting of evolutionary biologists somewhere in America, you might be lucky and spot a tall, gray-whiskered, smiling man bearing a striking resemblance to Abraham Lincoln, standing rather diffidently at the back of the crowd. He will probably be surrounded by a knot of admirers, hanging on his every word—for he is a man of few words.… — Matt Ridley Copy Share
“Merchants and craftsmen make prosperity; chiefs, priests and thieves fritter it away.” — Matt Ridley Copy Share Image
At some point, human intelligence became collective and cumulative in a way that happened to no other animal. — Matt Ridley Copy Share Image
We consciously decide whether to consider people; we fall in love despite ourselves; we entirely fail to fall in love with people who fall… — Matt Ridley Copy Share Image
It's terrifying the way molecular biology has become more and more jargon ridden. But I strongly believe that my book can be read by… — Matt Ridley Copy Share Image
“The gene contains a single 'word', repeated over and over again: CAG, CAG, CAG, CAG ... The repetition continues sometimes just six times, sometimes thirty, sometimes more than a hundred times. Your destiny, your sanity and your life hang by the thread of this repetition. If the 'word' is repeated thirty-five times or fewer, you will be fine. Most of… — Matt Ridley Copy Share
“If you think being descended from apes is bad for your self esteem, then get used to the idea that you are also descended… — Matt Ridley Copy Share Image
Government can encourage innovation, but mainly by doing less, not doing more. — Matt Ridley Copy Share Image
Note even Jonathan Swift would dare to write a satire in which politicians argued that - in a world where species are vanishing and more than a billion people are barely able to afford to eat - it would somehow be good for the planet to clear rain-forests to grow palm oil, or give up food-crop land to grow biofuels,… — Matt Ridley Copy Share
The evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in 1976 coined the term ‘meme’ for a unit of cultural imitation. — Matt Ridley Copy Share Image
This idea holds out hope that the human race will prosper mightily in the years ahead-because ideas are having sex with each other as… — Matt Ridley Copy Share Image
