298 Quotes by Matt Ridley

American presidential politics is entirely based on the myth that a perfect, omniscient, virtuous and incorruptible saviour will emerge from the New Hampshire primary every four years, and proceed to lead his people to the promised land.

Far from being parasitic exploiters of the workers, most businessmen were innovators looking to outwit their rivals, by doing things better or cheaper, and in doing so they inevitably brought improvements to the living standards of consumers. Most.

Like Milton Friedman, I notice that ’business corporations in general are not defenders of free enterprise. On the contrary, they are one of the chief sources of danger.

As Lord Acton said, great men are mostly bad men.

This is what prosperity is: the increase in the amount of goods or services you can earn with the same amount of work.

There are two ways to tell the story of the twentieth century. You can describe a series of wars, revolutions, crises, epidemics, financial calamities. Or you can point to the gentle but inexorable rise in the quality of life of almost everybody on the planet: the swelling of income, the conquest of disease, the disappearance of parasites, the retreat of want, the increasing persistence of peace, the lengthening of life, the advances in technology.

It is easier to wax elegiac for the life of a peasant when you do not have to use a long-drop toilet.

The real cause of poverty today – now that it is avoidable – is the unchecked power of the state against poor people without rights, says William Easterly.

Montagues and Capulets, French and English, Whig and Tory, Airbus and Boeing, Pepsi and Coke, Serb and Muslim, Christian and Saracen – we are irredeemably tribal creatures. The neighbouring or rival group, however defined, is automatically an enemy. Argentinians and Chileans hate each other because there is nobody else nearby to hate.