Raymond Smullyan

Raymond Smullyan in 2008

Raymond Smullyan (May 25, 1919 – February 6, 2017) was an American philosopher, mathematician, logician and a magician.

Quotes

• Why should I worry about dying? It's not going to happen in my lifetime!
  • This Book Needs No Title (1986)

• 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!
  • Is God a Taoist? (1977)[1]

• 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.
  • Is God a Taoist? (1977)

• There is nothing like a naturalistic orientation to dispel all these morbid thoughts of "sin" and "free will" and "moral responsibility."
  • Is God a Taoist? (1977)

• Medical opinions differed as to the cause of this "humor" disease.
  • Planet Without Laughter (1980)[2]

• From what little was known about the subject, insincerity itself was regarded as another form of psychosis but one which was exceedingly rare.
  • Planet Without Laughter (1980)

• Humor could not flourish in a wholly serious and rational atmosphere.
  • Planet Without Laughter (1980)

• Metaphysical problems about "mind" versus "matter" arise only from epistemological confusions.
  • An Epistemological Nightmare (1982)[3]

• 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!
  • An Epistemological Nightmare (1982)

• 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.
  • An Epistemological Nightmare (1982)

External links

• Is God a Taoist? by Raymond Smullyan, 1977. [4]
• Planet Without Laughter by Raymond Smullyan, 1980. [5]
• An Epistemological Nightmare by Raymond Smullyan, 1982. [6]