Quotes from Matt Ridley

It is strange to me that most people assume companies will be imperfect (as they are), but they assume that government agencies will be perfect, which they are not.

Simple determinism, whether of the genetic or environmental kind, is a depressing prospect for those with a fondness for free will.

In a massive, long-term study of 17,000 civil servants, an almost unbelievable conclusion emerged: the status of a person's job was more likely to predict their likelihood of a heart attack than obesity, smoking or high blood pressure.

Ecology, like genetics, is not about equilibrium states. It is about change, change and change. Nothing stays the same forever.

How much more generous it would be if, instead of writing parables about childhood wounds, psychologists were to accept that some differences between the sexes just are, that they are in the nature of the beasts, because each sex has an evolved tendency to develop that way in response to experience.

The genome that we decipher in this generation is but a snapshot of an ever-changing document. There is no definitive edition.

At some point, human intelligence became collective and cumulative in a way that happened to no other animal.

Humanity is experiencing an extraordinary burst of evolutionary change, driven by good old-fashioned Darwinian natural selection. But it is selection among ideas, not among genes.

Life is a slippery thing to define, but it consists of two very different skills: the ability to replicate, and the ability to create order.

sex is merely a genetic joint venture. the process of choosing somebody to have sex with, which used to be known as falling in love, is mysterious, cerebral, and highly selective.

Genes are biochemical recipes written in a four-letter alphabet called DNA.

simplicity piled upon simplicity creates complexity.

Though politicians are regarded as scum, government as a machine is held to be almost infallible.

time always erodes advantage.

But if there is one dominant myth about the world, one huge mistake we all make, one blind spot, it is that we all go around assuming the world is much more of a planned place than it is. As a result, again and again we mistake cause for effect; we blame the sailing boat for the wind, or credit the bystander with causing the event.

Market failure is a favourite phrase; government failure is not.

people are attracted to people of high reproductive and genetic potential—the healthy, the fit, and the powerful.

American presidential politics is entirely based on the myth that a perfect, omniscient, virtuous and incorruptible saviour will emerge from the New Hampshire primary every four years, and proceed to lead his people to the promised land.