To earn some money during college, Raymond Smullyan applied for a job as a salesman. He had to take an examination, and one of the questions asked whether he had any objection to telling a small lie now and then. Smullyan did object, but he was afraid that he wouldn’t get the job if he said so. So he lied and said no.

“Later on, I realized I was in a kind of paradox!” Smullyan wrote later. “Did I object to the lie I told the sales company? I realized that I did not! Then since I didn’t object to that particular lie, it therefore followed that I don’t object to all lies, hence my answer ‘No’ was not a lie, but the truth! So was I lying or not?”

(From his book A Mixed Bag, 2016.)