Matt Ridley Quotes

My stress on the truth in sexual stereotypes and on the biologic basis of sex differences is sure to cause controversy.

The differences between the two sexes is one of the important conditions upon which we have built the many varieties of human culture that give human beings dignity and stature.

Whether we like it or not, men and women are not the same in nature, temperament, emotions and emotional responses.

Emotionally men and women are different, but only as a result of the physical differences. It all comes back to our bodies.

Physical, emotional, psychological and social differences [between the sexes] exist and dare not be disregarded.

I think that there is a difference between men and women as a warrior and a nurturer... It's innate.

Evolutionary psychology offers a parsimonious framework for understanding which domains are likely to yield sex differences and, if so, in which direction.

The equality of men and women is not possible because both are different. A mountain is a mountain, and a river is a river.

Most of the psychological differences between men and women seem to come from differences in their reproductive system

Historically, it appears that society has capitalized on what is at most a degree of difference between the sexes in order to institutionalize the polarization of aggression.

I say that male and female are cast in the same mold; except for education and habits, the difference is not great.

What worries me is that the debate about gender differences still seems to polarize nature vs. nurture, with some in the social sciences and humanities wanting to assert that biology plays no role at all, apparently unaware of the scientific evidence to the contrary

I have made mention of something I've found incredible a lot of times. I'm gonna remind you of it again. A TIME magazine cover back in the mid-1990s. The cover story on that issue of TIME magazine had the following headline Shock: Men and Women are Actually Born Different." When I saw that the first time, I was astounded. I cite it often, because I need to ask you a question: What must you think, what must you believe if you come across research that tells you men and women are born different?

New research shows that men and women are born different. What must you think if that is shocking news to you? Men and women are born different.

I do not deny certain kinds of biological differences. But I always ask under what conditions, under what discursive and institutional conditions, do certain biological differences - and they're not necessary ones, given the anomalous state of bodies in the world - become the salient characteristics of sex.

Standardized personality differences between the sexes are of this order, cultural creations to which each generation, male and female, is trained to conform.

Gender and sex are about rules which we have invented, but we are animals; we belong to nature.

From spending my decades thinking about behavior and the biological influences on it, I'm convinced by now free will is what we call the biology that hasn't been discovered yet. It's just another way of stating that we're biological organisms determined by the physical laws of the universe.

The E-S theory does not stereotype. Rather, it seeks to explain why individuals are typical or atypical for their sex.

You know, the girls, they are more unstable emotionally than us. I'm sure everybody will say it's true even the girls (laughter). No? No, you don't think? I mean, it's just about hormones and all this stuff. We don't have all these bad things, so we are physically in a good shape every time, and you are not. That's it.

When it comes to explaining human thought and behavior, the possibility that heredity plays any role at all still has the power to shock. To acknowledge human nature, many think, is to endorse racism, sexism, war, greed, genocide, nihilism, reactionary politics, and neglect of children and the disadvantaged. Any claim that the mind has an innate organization strikes people not as a hypothesis that might be incorrect but as a thought it is immoral to think.

It is ironic that a movement that made its reputation championing the irrelevance of biological differences when those differences were to most women's disadvantage immediately returned to biological determinism when those differences were to the most women's advantage.

[Feminists think difference in men and women] is all social. It is all about social cliches and pressures, that if you just leave boys and girls alone they're gonna grow up and be identical. They're gonna be the same in the way they look at life, the way they find things interesting. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Men and women are not "equal" if "equal" means "exactly the same." Our many puzzlements and indeed unhappinesses come from trying to figure out what the differences really mean, or should mean, or should not mean.

The feminists are trying to tell women that there is really no difference between them and men. Just as men can be promiscuous, women can, too, and go for one night stands without consequences. But there are consequences. The women have the suffering of the abortion. They suffer more with the social diseases.