# Quote — Theodore Sturgeon, Venus Plus X

> There is in mankind a deep and desperate necessity to feel superior. In any group there are some who genuinely are superior...but it is easy to see that within the parameters of any group, be it culture, club, nation, profession, only a few are really superior; the mass, clearly, are not.
>
> But it is the will of the mass that dictates the mores, initiated though changes may be by individuals or minorities; the individuals or minorities, more often than not, are cut down for their trouble. And if a unit of the mass wants to feel superior, it will find a way. This terrible drive has found expression in many ways, through history—in slavery and genocide, xenophobia and snobbery, race prejudice and sex differentiation. Given a man who, among his fellows, has no real superiority, you are faced with a bedevilled madman who, if superiority is denied him, and he cannot learn one or earn one, will turn on something weaker than himself and make it inferior. The obvious, logical, handiest subject for this inexcusable indignity is his woman.
>
> He could not do this to anyone he loved.

- Author: [Theodore Sturgeon](https://www.leafyquotes.com/theodore-sturgeon.md)
- Book: [Venus Plus X](https://www.leafyquotes.com/theodore-sturgeon/venus-plus-x.md)
- Page: 126
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Theodore_Sturgeon#Venus_Plus_X_(1960)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/theodore-sturgeon/venus-plus-x/there-is-in-mankind

## More from this book

> Is it men’s disgust of women that makes so many of them treat women with such contempt? Is it that which makes it so easy to point out that the Don Juans and the Lotharios, for all their hunger for women, are often merely trying to see how many women they can punish?

p. 114 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/theodore-sturgeon/venus-plus-x/is-it-mens.md)

> So it is easily seen that the sexual insignes are nothing in themselves, for any of them, in another time and place, might belong to both sexes, the other sex, or neither. In other words, a skirt does not make the social entity, woman. It takes a skirt plus a social attitude to do it.
>
> But all through history, in virtually every culture and country, there has indeed been a “woman’s province” and a “man’s province,” and in most cases the differences between them have been exploited to fantastic, sometimes sickening extremes.
>
> Why?

p. 125 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/theodore-sturgeon/venus-plus-x/so-it-is-easily.md)

> There were a lot of people living in his time who never did latch on to the idea that the curve of technological progress was not a flat slanting line like a diving board, but a geometrical curve like a ski-jump. These wistful and mixed-up souls were always suffering from attacks of belated conservatism, clutching suddenly at this dying thing and that, trying to keep it or bring it back. It wasn’t real conservatism at all, of course, but an unthought longing for the dear old days when one could predict what would be there tomorrow, if not next week. Unable to get the big picture, they welcomed the conveniences, the miniaturization of this and the speed of that, and then were angrily confused when their support of these things changed their world.

p. 33 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/theodore-sturgeon/venus-plus-x/there-were-a-lot.md)