The sex illusion is not a fixed quantity: not what mathematicians call a constant. It varies from zero in my wife’s case to madness in that of our stepsister.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
It is almost everywhere the case that soon after it is begotten the greater part of human wisdom is laid to rest in repositories.
—G.C. (Georg Christoph)
The Sceptic being a lover of his kind, desires to cure by speech, as best he can, the self-conceit and rashness of the Dogmatists. So, just as the physicians who cure bodity ailments have remedies which differ in strength, and apply the severe ones to those whose ailments are severe and the milder to those mildly affected—so too the Sceptic propounds arguments which differ in strength, and employs those which are weighty and capable by their stringency of disposing of the Dogmatists’ ailment, self-conceit, in cases where the mischief is due to a severe attack of rashness, which he employs the milder arguments in the case of those whose ailment is superficial and easy to cure, and whom it is possible to restore to health by milder methods of persuasion.
—Sextus Empiricus (2nd or 3rd cent., A.D.)