Raymond Smullyan Quotes

15 Sourced Quotes

Some people are always critical of vague statements. I tend rather to be critical of precise statements; they are the only ones which can correctly be labeled wrong.

Raymond Smullyan
Recently, someone asked me if I believed in astrology. He seemed somewhat puzzled when I explained that the reason I don't is that I'm a Gemini.

Raymond Smullyan
Metaphysical problems about "mind" versus "matter" arise only from epistemological confusions.

Raymond Smullyan
I believe that either Jupiter has life or it doesn't. But I neither believe that it does, nor do I believe that it doesn't.

Raymond Smullyan
I certainly believe that some things may in principle be mysteries, but of what use is a hypothesis for explaining a mystery when the very hypothesis raises another mystery just as baffling as the one it explains?

Raymond Smullyan
Medical opinions differed as to the cause of this "humor" disease.

Raymond Smullyan
Why should I worry about dying? It's not going to happen in my lifetime!
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Raymond Smullyan
Humor could not flourish in a wholly serious and rational atmosphere.

Raymond Smullyan
It has always puzzled me that so many religious people have taken it for granted that God favors those who believe in him. Isn't it possible that the actual God is a scientific God who has little patience with beliefs founded on faith rather than evidence?

Raymond Smullyan
If it is really true that you cannot resist them, then you are not sinning of your own free will and hence (at least according to me) not sinning at all.

Raymond Smullyan
There is nothing like a naturalistic orientation to dispel all these morbid thoughts of "sin" and "free will" and "moral responsibility."

Raymond Smullyan
I have free will, but not of my own choice. I have never freely chosen to have free will. I have to have free will, whether I like it or not!

Raymond Smullyan
From what little was known about the subject, insincerity itself was regarded as another form of psychosis but one which was exceedingly rare.

Raymond Smullyan
Of course the falsity of the fact that you believe it is red implies that you don't believe it is red. But this does not mean that you believe it is not red!

Raymond Smullyan
Because I have been a magician for many years, people have often asked me whether I ever have sawn a woman in half. I reply, Oh, yes I've sawn over seventy women in half in my lifetime, and I'm learning the second half of the trick now.

Raymond Smullyan