Raymond Smullyan Quotes

#1. Why should I be worried about dying? It's not going to happen in my lifetime!

Raymond Smullyan

#2. 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

#3. Why do I act as I do? To tell you the truth, I have absolutely no idea why. It is simply my nature to act as I act, and that's all I can say.

Raymond Smullyan

#4. All my life I have been intensely repelled by the idea of 'making an effort'. I hate this idea today as much as I did as a child. I don't know why I hate it so much; I just do.

Raymond Smullyan

#5. It has always puzzled me that so many 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

#6. 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

#7. 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

#8. Metaphysical problems about "mind" versus "matter" arise only from epistemological confusions.

Raymond Smullyan

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

Raymond Smullyan

#10. Humor could not flourish in a wholly serious and rational atmosphere.

Raymond Smullyan

#11. Why should I be worried about death? ...

Raymond Smullyan

#12. 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

#13. 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