Genome: the Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters

Matt Ridley

Top 10 Best Quotes

“A true scientist is bored by knowledge; it is the assault on ignorance that motivates him - the mysteries that previous discoveries have revealed.”

“The fuel on which science runs is ignorance. Science is like a hungry furnace that must be fed logs from the forests of ignorance that surround us. In the process, the clearing we call knowledge expands, but the more it expands, the longer its perimeter and the more ignorance comes into view.”

“The genome is a book that wrote itself, continually adding, deleting and amending over four billion years.”

“Simple determinism, whether of the genetic or environmental kind, is a depressing prospect for those with a fondness for free will.”

“In a massive, long-term study of 17,000 civil servants, an almost unbelievable conclusion emerged: the status of a person's job was more likely to predict their likelihood of a heart attack than obesity, smoking or high blood pressure.”

“Ecology, like genetics, is not about equilibrium states. It is about change, change and change. Nothing stays the same forever.”

“The genome that we decipher in this generation is but a snapshot of an ever-changing document. There is no definitive edition.”

“Life is a slippery thing to define, but it consists of two very different skills: the ability to replicate, and the ability to create order.”

“simplicity piled upon simplicity creates complexity.”

“Yet the evidence, from twin studies, from the children of immigrants and from adoption studies, is now staring us in the face: people get their personalities from their genes and from their peers, not from their parents.”

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amazing-facts, genes, health, status