Raymond Smullyan Quotes

What came up at age 49 is I realized that of all the things I'm interested in, the thing I'm most interested in is figuring out what makes people tick, why people think the way they do, why they act the way they do. And I realized that music is such a great way to investigate why people do what they do.

I like analyzing human behavior. It's complex. That's what keeps me going.

Money and success don't change people; they merely amplify what is already there.

I'm so fascinated with the study of people and why they are the way they are. That's my research and my archaeology, if you will, when I get a role. I'm so excited to attack a part from every angle of what makes a person a person.

I think the human mind is fascinating. I love figuring out why people are doing what they do.

People are very complex. And for a psychologist, you get fascinated by the complexity of human beings, and that is what I have lived with, you know, in my career all of my life, is the complexity of human beings.

I think a lot of people are curious about what makes people do what they do, and I guess my curiosity isn't hidden in any way.

I'm interested in character and people and motivations and things like that.

I'm very interested in what makes people tick; people are so weird and complicated.

When you start to think about the drives that humans have, I think sometimes we find we are simpler than we thought and more easily manipulated.

Guess what? Human beings are complex.

I'm interested in what makes people tick, how they think, what makes them behave the way they do.

Because I am fascinated by people and what makes them behave the way they do. I think it is one of the most fascinating things in the world.

I have come to the conclusion that my subjective account of my motivation is largely mythical on almost all occasions. I don't know why I do things.

We often do not know ourselves the grounds On which we act, though plain to others.

I just love thinking about what makes people tick

While people argue with one another about the specifics of Freud's work and blame him for the prejudices of his time, they overlook the fundamental truth of his writing, his grand humility: that we frequently do not know our own motivations in life and are prisoners to what we cannot understand. We can recognize only a small fragment of our own, and an even smaller fragment of anyone else's, impetus.

Don't give me that look. I'm not trying to find out who you are. I don't care who you are. I just want to know why it is you are the way you are.

I was a psychology major. I think that definitely helps in general life; I enjoy trying to figure out why people are the way they are.

There are two kinds of people in this world: people who want to be desired, and people who want to be desired so much that they pretend they don't.

The more one analyses people, the more all reasons for analysis disappear. Sooner or later one comes to that dreadful universal thing called human nature.

One will rarely err if extreme actions be ascribed to vanity, ordinary actions to habit, and mean actions to fear.

I think that's the real horror story for me, how little you can ever really know about your own motivations. How in the dark we all are about the concerns and the contents of our minds.

I have never met an aggressive person who wasn’t a fearful person.

Inherited aptitudes and traits of temperament count for quite as much as length of habituation in deciding what range of habits will come to dominate any individual's scheme of life.