Lester Frank Ward Quotes

“It is common to regard pleasure and pain as opposites, the former as positive and the latter negative, but this is only a convenient conception and is not physiologically true. When we consider their origin and purpose we see that they were both positive attributes created for specific ends.”

“The conscious creature is conscious only of its own states. It is not conscious of the
functional effect of its actions in response to those states.”

“The same force that pushed life into existence tends to perpetuate and increase it. This is the chief function of organic life, and nothing can be genetically created that does not assist in the performance of it. Such assistance is the test of advantageousness, and nothing is advantageous that does not so assist.”

“There is no doubt that even in man thousands of pleasures and pains are experienced that are never referred to the brain and of which the man himself as such knows nothing. ”

“There is pleasure in activity, provided the activity be spontaneous and consist in this normal exercise of the faculties. The so-called play instinct is nothing but this, and is not an instinct in the proper sense of the word. The idea that pleasure results from ease and inactivity is doubtless derived from the fact that man has been long enslaved and compelled to make laborious and painful exertions not demanded by his faculties.”

“There was a time when every bishop was a pope, and it took several centuries to invest the bishop of Rome with the supreme power.”