Matt Ridley Quotes

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

“Because it is a monopoly, government brings inefficiency and stagnation to most things it runs; government agencies pursue the inflation of their budgets rather than the service of their customers; pressure groups form an unholy alliance with agencies to extract more money from taxpayers for their members. Yet despite all this, most clever people still call for government to run more things and assume that if it did so, it would somehow be more perfect, more selfless, next time.”

“For barter to work, two individuals do not need to offer things of equal value. Trade is often unequal, but still benefits both sides.”

“Futurology always ends up telling you more about your own time than about the future.”

“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.”

“It is common to find that two traders both think their counterparts are idiotically overpaying.”

“It is my proposition that the human race has become a collective problem-solving machine and it solves problems by changing its ways.”

“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.”

“Random violence makes the news precisely because it is so rare, routine kindness does not make the news precisely because it is so commonplace.”

“The cornucopia that greets you as you enter the supermarket dwarfs anything that Louis XIV ever experienced (and it is probably less likely to contain salmonella).”

“The evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in 1976 coined the term ‘meme’ for a unit of cultural imitation.”

“The Stone Age did not come to an end for lack of stone.”

“The success of human beings depends crucially, but precariously, on numbers and connections. A few hundred people cannot sustain a sophisticated technology: trade is a vital part of the story.”

“Think of this: never before this generation has the average person been able to afford to have somebody else prepare his meals.”

“Those of libertarian bent often prove more generous than those of a socialist persuasion: where the socialist feels that it is government’s job to look after the poor using taxes, libertarians think it is their duty.”