Matt Ridley Quotes

I asked John Maynard Smith, one of the first people to pose the question 'Why sex?', whether he still thought some new explanation was needed. 'No. We have the answers. We cannot agree on them, that is all.'

Matt Ridley

• People
• Why
• Question
• Sex

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Quotes to Explore

• In my opinion, all relationships between people have some sort of violence, and it is central.

  

  Park Chan-wook
  • People
  • Opinion
  • Violence

• Look what venison does to a goofy guitar player from Detroit? I'm going to be 54 this year and if I had any more energy I'd scare you.

  

  Ted Nugent
  • Energy
  • Player
  • Year

• If you would make the most of yourself, never picture yourself as anything different from what you would actually be, the man or woman you long to become.

  

  Orison Swett Marden
  • Different
  • Long
  • Man

• The Great War was a progressive revelation and disillusionment.

  

  Ralph Adams Cram
  • Great
  • War
  • Progressive

• We may say most aptly that the Analytical Engine weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves.

  

  Ada Lovelace
  • May
  • Say
  • Flowers

• My feeling is, I do a lot of low-budget films. I don't do low-budget acting. I have no interest in just goofballing my way through, thinking, 'Ah, no one's ever going to see this anyway.'

  

  Lance Henriksen
  • Thinking
  • Feeling
  • Acting

• I'm a woman who eventually will get married and have kids - adopted at this point - but I see myself with a family and less time to commit to wanting to be a lead character.

  

  Octavia Spencer
  • Time
  • Family
  • Character

• I'm a chubby middle-aged white guy with short hair. I think that's it, really. I kind of have a look. Right now, I'm not fat enough to be the fat friend, but I'm not thin enough to be the leading man, so I look like a cop.

  

  Aaron Douglas
  • Guy
  • Man
  • Friend

• Nobody, I think, ought to read poetry, or look at pictures or statues, who cannot find a great deal more in them than the poet or artist has actually expressed. Their highest merit is suggestiveness.

  

  Nathaniel Hawthorne
  • Great
  • Artist
  • Poetry

• As long as a film stays unmade, the book is entirely yours, it belongs to the writer. As soon as you make it into a film, suddenly more people see it than have ever read the book.

  

  Iain Banks
  • People
  • Long
  • Book

• There's such a preoccupation with liquidity and such an unwillingness to invest beyond the horizon of the next quarter and making sure that the CEOs hit their quarterly earnings.

  

  Edmund Phelps
  • Invest
  • Horizon
  • Beyond

• I am such a do-goody, people-pleasing kid - or I was - I don't think I've ever been fired, not even from an ice cream shop, magician for kids' parties, not even in my early jobs in radio.

  

  Ira Glass
  • Kids
  • Pleasing
  • Fired

• Intelligence is sexy. Don't play dumb, especially young girls. Don't play dumb. And let people see that you are intelligent.

  

  Iman
  • People
  • Intelligent
  • Sexy

• But the issue has to do with land, which is our land.

  

  Bashar al-Assad
  • Land
  • Issue
  • Which

• I can't imagine being mayor and not having had the experience working for President Clinton or President Obama, or, for that matter, working in Congress. On the other hand, I think I would have been a better adviser had I been mayor first. If I had had this job first, I could have seen the implications of things I was doing.

  

  Rahm Emanuel
  • Job
  • Experience
  • Hand

• I sort of understood that when I first started: that you shouldn't repeat a success. Very often you're going to, and maybe the first time you do, it works. And you love it. But then you're trapped.

  

  Jack Nicholson
  • Time
  • Love
  • Success

• The fact that hype exists doesn't prove that something is not important.

  

  Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
  • Important
  • Prove
  • Hype

• Nancy Lopez has always been a role model of mine... so to have the opportunity to play for her and spend time with her has been amazing.

  

  Natalie Gulbis
  • Time
  • Opportunity
  • Amazing

• This story of loss and regaining of identity is, I think, the framework of all literature.

  

  Northrop Frye
  • Literature
  • Stories
  • Identity

• Some fella said to me, 'Have you had LSD, Paul?' And I said 'Yes.' And it was only 'cuz I was going to just be honest with him. There's no other reason. I didn't want to spread it or anything, you know. I'm not trying to do anything except answer his question. But he happened to be a reporter, and I happened to be a Beatle.

  

  Paul McCartney The Beatles
  • Trying
  • Question

• People who want to write either do it or they don't. At last I began to say that my most important talent - or habit - was persistence. Without it, I would have given up writing long before I finished my first novel. It's amazing what we can do if we simply refuse to give up.

  

  Octavia E. Butler
  • People
  • Important
  • Writing

• I asked John Maynard Smith, one of the first people to pose the question 'Why sex?', whether he still thought some new explanation was needed. 'No. We have the answers. We cannot agree on them, that is all.'

  

  Matt Ridley
  • People
  • Why
  • Question