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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 5eeb5f9 | Uniqueness is the commodity of glut. | Matt Ridley | ||
| 7d70e20 | If, as a professor, you ask four men and two women each to wear a cotton T-shirt, no deodorant and no perfume, for two nights, then hand these T-shirts to you, you will probably be humored as a mite kinky. | Matt Ridley | ||
| 768c3cc | Throughout history, the characteristic feature of the nation state is its monopoly of violence. | Matt Ridley | ||
| 96eee2d | As I write this, it is nine o'clock in the morning. In the two hours since I got out of bed I have showered in water heated by North Sea gas, shaved using an American razor running on electricity made from British coal, eaten a slice of bread made from French wheat, spread with New Zealand butter and Spanish marmalade, then brewed a cup of tea using leaves grown in Sri Lanka, dressed myself in clothes of Indian cotton and Australian wool, w.. | Matt Ridley | ||
| 5bf7426 | The market is a system of mass cooperation. | Matt Ridley | ||
| decc66b | Our habits and our institutions, from language to cities, are constantly changing, and the mechanism of change turns out to be surprisingly Darwinian: it is gradual, undirected, mutational, inexorable, combinatorial, selective and in some vague sense progressive. | Matt Ridley | ||
| 7c9477f | Market failure is a favourite phrase; government failure is not. | Matt Ridley | ||
| 1884133 | Mankind is a self-domesticated animal; a mammal; an ape; a social ape; an ape in which the male takes the iniative in courtship and females usually leave the society of their birth; an ape in which men are predators, women herbivorous foragers; an ape in which males are relatively hierarchical, females relatively egalitarian; an ape in which males contribute unusually large amounts of investment in the upbringing of their offspring by provi.. | Matt Ridley | ||
| 86c79f5 | What was the secret that the serpent told Eve? That she could eat a certain fruit? Pah. That was a euphemism. The fruit was carnal knowledge, and everybody from Thomas Aquinas to Milton knew it. How did they know it? Nowhere in Genesis is there even the merest hint of the equation: Forbidden fruit equals sin equals sex. We know it to be true because there can only be one thing so central to mankind. Sex. | Matt Ridley | ||
| b49d910 | Few debates in the history of science have been conducted with such stupidity as the one about intelligence. | Matt Ridley | ||
| de093cd | Among the required reading for all PUAs were books on evolutionary theory: The Red Queen by Matt Ridley, The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, Sperm Wars by Robin Baker. You read them, and you understand why women tend to like jerks, why men want so many sexual partners, and why so many people cheat on their spouses. At the same time, however, you understand that the violent impulses most of us successfully repress are actually normal and na.. | Neil Strauss | ||
| c77ae60 | The struggle for existence never gets easier. However well a species may adapt to its environment, it can never relax, because its competitors and its enemies are also adapting to their niches. Survival is a zero-sum game. | Matt Ridley | ||
| 0fbeba4 | Friedrich Hayek advanced the view that the common law contributed to greater economic welfare because it was less interventionist, less under the tutelage of the state, and was better able to respond to change than civil legal systems; indeed, it was for him a legal system that led, like the market, to a spontaneous order. | Matt Ridley | ||
| b1774d0 | For far too long we have underestimated the power of spontaneous, organic and constructive change driven from below, in our obsession with designing change from above. Embrace the general theory of evolution. Admit that everything evolves. | Matt Ridley | ||
| 57ede63 | Specialisation, accompanied by exchange, is the source of economic prosperity. Here, in my own words, is what a modern version of Smithism claims. First, the spontaneous and voluntary exchange of goods and services leads to a division of labour in which people specialise in what they are good at doing. Second, this in turn leads to gains from trade for each party to a transaction, because everybody is doing what he is most productive at and.. | Matt Ridley | ||
| c48a438 | The conclusion that all these studies converge upon is that about half of your IQ was inherited, and less than a fifth was due to the environment you shared with your siblings - the family. The rest came from the womb, the school and outside influences such as peer groups. But even this is misleading. Not only does your IQ change with age, but so does its heritability. As you grow up and accumulate experiences, the influence of your genes i.. | Matt Ridley | ||
| 2dcc7f6 | Quite a few vampires, especially the elders, regarded those who creep through graveyard shadows in batwing capes and fingerless black gloves as an Edinburgh gentleman might look upon a Yankee with a single Scots grandparent who swathes himself in kilts and tartan sashes, prefaces every remark with quotes from Burns or Scott and affects a fondness for bagpipes and haggis. | Kim Newman | ||
| ec39c2e | Writing. It's a trivial pursuit, hardly worth the effort, inconsequential on any cosmic level. It's just blood and sweat and guts and bone hauled out of our bodies and fed through a typewriter to slosh all over the platen. | Kim Newman | ||
| ec2ab6b | Tell me something in your native woodland language. | Marta Acosta | ||
| 778564d | Anyone can ride a bike," Jack said. "Even an elf." The corner of his mouth went up in amusement. "She can ramble through the grove, her natural habitat, and visit her animal subjects." | Marta Acosta | ||
| 5ce6979 | Do you know what is our problem? We know everything about our weapons, but we know nothing about how to use a telephone. | Åsne Seierstad | ||
| b722896 | I'm stuck in the old me, and I don't know how to get out. I just know the old me isn't the real me anymore. | Jennifer Crusie | ||
| 4ac699a | You don't believe in unconditional love. Neither does Alex. So you both threw away the best thing you ever had because you didn't believe in each other or yourselves. | Jennifer Crusie | ||
| 5b4a47b | Lee stood in front of the class the first day and said, "Anybody who makes fun of romance fiction is making fun of Jane Austen, and anybody who makes fun of Jane Austen answers to me." Why yes, I would walk across broken glass for that man. Why do you ask?" | Jennifer Crusie | ||
| 1fdbb58 | Don't let foolish assumptions about what's appropriate keep you from a good man. There are too few good men around to ignore one just because he's the perfect age for you. | Jennifer Crusie | ||
| 1ed4ee4 | I'm thirty-four." "You don't look thirty-four." "That's because I'm not married." Mae's smile felt as if it were set in concrete. "Marriage tends to age a woman." | marriage youth | Jennifer Crusie | |
| 7a989ab | You know, I'm not even sure how we ended up living together." "I am," Jake said, turning back to the lake. "Sex. It's a powerful force, my boy, and women use it." "Is that why you gave them up?" Will asked, sympathetically. "Did paranoia drive you to celibacy?" | men-and-women sex | Jennifer Crusie | |
| 8e804a9 | Kid, I've only known you two days and I've seen you plastered three times." He shook his head. "A bar would not be a good career move for you." | humor | Jennifer Crusie | |
| 99fc146 | Who was the moron on the phone?" "Carl Avery," Kate said. "A long-standing client and potential felon." | crime humor | Jennifer Crusie | |
| 15fff69 | You're planning on being disappointed, you'd be disappointed if you weren't disappointed, your whole world view depends on men disappointing you. Well, that's just cowardly. | Jennifer Crusie | ||
| 9124903 | But at least if you hint and are rejected, the rejection is blurable rather than blistering. Whereas if you ask outright and are refused, the humiliation is as stark as a streaker on a football. | Anna Maxted | ||
| 06b627e | She has decided all university campuses are alike- the sense of possibility and stasis. She thinks this too: all graduate students, if you look closely enough, exude the same aura of privilege and poverty. | university | Danzy Senna | |
| b2ff507 | My father tells me that the further you get away from an experience, the deeper it roots itself inside of you. Don't fool yourself, baby, he said. Time does not heal and history is not progressive. | Danzy Senna | ||
| 8abe4ef | kty'b swdwy Hd wntHry Twyl stmr kthr mn sn@ wnSf mndh styqZy fy lSbH Ht~ wqt ldhhb lsryry llnwm fy llyl knt sh`r nny t`ys@ bshkl l yTq wfqd@ lqdr@ `l~ lmt`@ tmm ,kn kl shyy' yjhdny ,ltfkyr lklm wlHrk@ kl shyy' kn fy lsbq mtwhj SbH ln mnTfy' . | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 8c048fc | From the time I woke up in the morning until the time I went to bed at night, I was unbearably miserable and seemingly incapable of any kind of joy or enthusiasm. Everything--every thought, word, movement--was an effort. Everything that once was sparkling now was flat. I seemed to myself to be dull, boring, inadequate, thick brained, unlit, unresponsive, chill skinned, bloodless, and sparrow drab. I doubted, completely, my ability to do any.. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 26a2155 | Feeling normal for any extended period of time raises hopes that turn out, almost invariably, to be writ on water. I | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| f81bcd7 | It is the history of our kindnesses that alone makes this world tolerable," wrote Robert Louis Stevenson. "If" | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 9eb359a | lqd kuntu dy'man 'syr@ Hlt mzjy@ mr`b@ , rGm 'nh dy'man mdhsh@. knt `Tfy@ jdan kTfl@ , w mtqlb@ lmzj kft@, w mkty'b@ mn ldrj@ l'wl~ kmrhq@. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 18690b0 | lqd stGrq l'mr mny zmnan Twylan lky 'drk 'n lsnwt w l`lqt lnsny@ lty fqdth l ymkn strj`h, w 'n l'dh~ ldhy wq` `l~ nfsy w `l~ lakhryn l ymkn dy'man SlHh , w 'n ltHrr mn syTr@ ldw `lyk yfqd m`nh `ndm ykwn lkhyrn lwHydn hm: lmwt, 'w ljnwn. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| e1f7ad3 | It took my year in England to make me realize how much I had been simply treading water, settling on surviving and avoiding pain rather than being actively involved in and seeking out life. The chance to escape from the reminders of illness and death, from a hectic life, and from clinical and teaching responsibilities was not unlike my earlier year as an undergraduate in St. Andrews: it gave me a semblance of peace that had eluded me, and a.. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 2dcac8f | before you can conquer a beast you first must make it beautiful. In some strange way, I have tried to do that with manic-depressive illness. It has been a fascinating, albeit deadly, enemy and companion; I have found it to be seductively complicated, a distillation both of what is finest in our natures, and of what is most dangerous. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 5b3e84c | While she might not have opted for this illness, neither does she entirely regret it; she prefers, as she writes so movingly, a life ofpassionate turbulence to one of tedious calm. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 3dbd43a | Manic-depression distorts moods and thoughts, incites dreadful behaviors, destroys the basis of rational thought, and too often erodes the desire and will to live. It is an illness that is biological in its origins, yet one that feels psychological in the experience of it; an illness that is unique in conferring advantage and pleasure, yet one that brings in its wake almost unendurable | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 8c48b5e | Patient reluctant to be with people when depressed because she feels her depression is such an intolerable burden on others";" | Kay Redfield Jamison |