Matt Ridley

"Nicholas Humphrey, a Cambridge psychologist, was the first to see clearly the solution to this puzzle. We use our intellects not to solve practical problems, but to outwit each other. Deceiving people…"

"It is no harder to explain than a game of cards. There are aces and kings and twos and threes in any deck of cards. A lucky player is dealt a high-scoring hand, but none of his cards is unique. Elsewh…"

"In chess or in football, the tactic that proves most effective is soon the one that people learn easily to block. Every innovation in attack is soon countered by another in defence."

"Rational optimism holds that the world will pull out of the current crisis because of the way that markets in goods, services and ideas allow human beings to exchange and specialise honestly for the b…"

"The longer your generation time, the more genetic mixing you need to combat your parasite."

"...nobody has told the coelancath, a fish that lives off Madagascar and looks exactly like its ancestors of 300 million years ago, that it has broken some law by not evolving."

"It is sometimes hard even for biologists to remember that sex is merely a genetic joint venture."

"Computer viruses have since become a worldwide problem. It begins to look as if parasites are inevitable in any system of life."