Matt Ridley
Matt Ridley
Matthew White Ridley, 5th Viscount Ridley DL FRSL FMedSci, known commonly as Matt Ridley, is a British journalist who has written several popular science books. He is also a businessman and a Conservative member of the House of Lords...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth7 February 1958
enable inch wide
I thought journalism would enable me to be a mile wide and an inch deep.
anytime coming convinced imagine lived
I can't imagine not coming back to New Orleans, ... We've lived here all of our lives, and we don't take it for granted. We don't know how long it's going to be before we have to make this choice. We're pretty convinced that we're not coming back anytime real soon.
changed fast life people society species
If people are all the same underneath, how has society changed so fast and so radically? Life now is completely different to how it was 32,000 years ago. It's changed like that of no other species has. What's made that difference?
means
I opted for a freelance writing career. I was lucky enough to have the means to do it.
bound faster mate meet
Nowadays, ideas can meet and mate very much faster than before, and the Internet is only accelerating this process. So innovation is bound to accelerate.
capital hard misery people sorry television watching
Watching those people on television made it hard to feel sorry for myself, ... That was misery - capital M.
sex years ideas
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 never before.
sex ideas brain
You need to understand how human beings bring together their brains and enable their ideas to combine and recombine, to meet and, indeed, to mate. In other words, you need to understand how ideas have sex.
evolution ancient products
Society works not because we have consciously invented it, but because it is an ancient product of our evolved predispositions. It is literally in our nature.
ignorance discovery bored
A true scientist is bored by knowledge; it is the assault on ignorance that motivates him - the mysteries that previous discoveries have revealed.
zero lying heart
It is not a zero sum game. The simple idea of the gains from trade lies at the heart of the modern and the ancient economy, not the power of capital. There is nothing else to it.
sex writing differences
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.
dna four recipes
Genes are biochemical recipes written in a four-letter alphabet called DNA.
prosperity nostalgic stressful
Prosperity has brought complications. Our lives are busier, faster, more stressful. They're nostalgic for a simpler, slower time.