Quotes from Matt Ridley

We are survival machines – robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes. This is a truth that still fills me with astonishment. Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene

the economist John Bell Condliffe, saw what was happening, and warned presciently in 1938: 'We face a new and more formidable superstition than the world has ever known: the myth of the nation-state, whose priests are as intolerant as those of the Inquisition.' Condliffe saw autocratic power as the cause of, not the solution to, poverty. Much

It makes more sense to see the body as serving the needs of the genes than vice versa. Bottom–up.

It follows a narrative, going from one stage to the next; it creeps rather than jumps; it has its own spontaneous momentum, rather than being driven from outside; it has no goal or end in mind; and it largely happens by trial and error – a version of natural selection.

Obama himself may have turned out to be something of a dud, but the cult of presidential personality that has dominated American politics for decades now still persists.

the state has socialised the cost and privatised the reward. That

You put garbage in the rubbish bin; you keep junk in the attic or garage.

the diagnostic feature of life is that it captures energy to create order. This is also a hallmark of civilisation.

events are shaped by history rather than vice versa.

Far more than we like to admit, the world is to a remarkable extent a self-organising, self-changing place.

The characteristic signature of poverty is a return to self-sufficiency.

In truth, far from being unsustainable, the interdependence of the world through trade is the very thing that makes modern life as sustainable as it is.

Let's give a bit less credit to creationists, while we encourage and celebrate the evolution of everything.

If you think being descended from apes is bad for your self esteem, then get used to the idea that you are also descended from viruses.

Far from being choosy, female primates seemed to be initiators of much promiscuity. Hrdy began to suggest that there was something wrong with the theory rather than the females.

we all enjoy making other people happy. How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortunes of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, but the pleasure of seeing it.

Arguably, the orang-utan, being devastated by the loss of forest to palm oil bio-fuel plantations in Borneo, is under greater threat from renewable energy than the polar bear is from global warming.

Merchants and craftsmen make prosperity; chiefs, priests and thieves fritter it away.

And by forcing ourselves to learn something, we place ourselves in a selective environment that puts a premium on a future instinctive solution to the problem. Thus, learning gradually gives way to instinct.

story of a philosopher who runs when a bear charges him and his friend.

Many people are bothered about the number of privately owned guns in the United States, but what about publicly owned ones?

It's no good, you'll never outrun a bear," says the logical friend.

Today, of Americans officially designated as 'poor', 99 per cent have electricity, running water, flush toilets, and a refrigerator; 95 per cent have a television, 88 per cent a telephone, 71 per cent a car and 70 per cent air conditioning. Cornelius Vanderbilt had none of these.

Shakespeare was a far better psychologist than Freud, and Jane Austen a far better sociologist than Durkheim