I'm not sure I buy that argument. Yes, it is true that to be a gas, the molecule must have a high enough velocity to be able to escape the attractive forces of neighboring gas molecules. But, since we're talking about forces and energy, it's not velocity that we need to consider, but kinetic energy. So smaller molecules will need to travel at a higher velocity in order to escape neighboring molecules attractive forces, while larger molecules can travel at slower speeds because their larger mass gives them more kinetic energy.