If you can’t be really good at anything, then the only way to be able to prove you are superior is to make someone else inferior. It is this rampagin… - Theodore Sturgeon

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If you can’t be really good at anything, then the only way to be able to prove you are superior is to make someone else inferior. It is this rampaging need in humanity which has, since pre-history, driven a man to stand on the neck of his neighbor, a nation to enslave another, a race to tread on a race. But it is also what men have always done to women.

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About Theodore Sturgeon

Theodore Sturgeon (born Edward Hamilton Waldo, 26 February 1918 – 8 May 1985) was an American author of science fiction, essayist, and poet.

Biography information from Wikiquote

Also Known As

Pen Names: E. Waldo Hunter
Birth Name: Edward Hamilton Waldo
Also Known As: Ted
Alternative Names: Ted Sturgeon
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Additional quotes by Theodore Sturgeon

But why write such rotten scripts? If what you say is so, everybody’s where they want to be, even beggars with sores on their shins and starving children and guys being tortured in jails?” She nodded, watching me. I said, “I can’t accept that.”
She waited a bit and then almost smiled. “Unacceptable?” She asked softly.
And that rang a bell. “Unacceptable … ‘to accept the unacceptable.’ You said that, in the seminar. But I can’t remember why you said it.”
“Yes you can,” she said, and waited. I drew a total blank this time, and I guess she knew it, because she gave me a nudge: “You say you don’t belong here. Is ‘here’ — unacceptable?”
“Yes,” I said without hesitation. “Then,” she asked, “why did you write this script?” “You mean — the me out there?” She nodded. I thought about that, and then mumbled, “I put it down to — curiosity? That’s all. I mean, throwing yourself into imperfect places, into pain and disappointment and well, the unacceptable — it just doesn’t make sense.”
“It doesn’t?”
“It sure doesn’t … unless …” I felt my eyes get big. “Unless those, uh, entities want to do what you said — to learn to accept the unacceptable. Even if they have to create it. That doesn’t make sense.”
“It doesn’t? Suppose they can’t go on unless they learn that.”
“Go on? Go on where?” She shrugs. “Everything living has to go on. Seed to shrub, shrub to tree, egg to bird.”
“You mean — evolve. They have to learn to accept the unacceptable in order to evolve into — whatever’s next for them.” Surprisingly, she laughed. She said, “You keep on saying ‘they.

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