According to numerous reports Ryle was quick-thinking, impatient with those slower than himself and charismatic (pp 502, 508, 510 of). He was also idealistic (p 519 of), a characteristic he shared with his father (p 499 of,). In an interview (p271 of) in 1982 he said "At times one feels that one should almost have a car sticker saying Stop Science Now because we're getting cleverer and cleverer, but we do not increase the wisdom to go with it."
He was also intense and volatile (p 327 of), the latter characteristic being associated with his mother (p 499 of, Folder A.20 of). The historian Owen Chadwick described him as "a rare personality, of exceptional sensitivity of mind, fears and anxieties, care and compassion, humour and anger." (Folder A.28 of)
Ryle was sometimes considered difficult to work with – he often worked in an office at the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory to avoid disturbances from other members of the Cavendish Laboratory and to avoid getting into heated arguments, as Ryle had a hot temper. Ryle worried that Cambridge would lose its standing in the radio astronomy community as other radio astronomy groups had much better funding, so he encouraged a certain amount of secrecy about his aperture synthesis methods in order to keep an advantage for the Cambridge group. Ryle had heated arguments with Fred Hoyle of the Institute of Astronomy about Hoyle's steady state universe, which restricted collaboration between the Cavendish Radio Astronomy Group and the Institute of Astronomy during the 1960s.