“Few can believe that suffering, especially by others, is in vain.”

— John Kenneth Galbraith

Source: The Age of Uncertainty (1977), Chapter 7, p. 211
Context: Few can believe that suffering, especially by others, is in vain. Anything that is disagreeable must surely have beneficial economic effects.

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John Kenneth Galbraith 207

American economist and diplomat 1908–2006

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

Sí, es necesario padecer, aún en vano, para no vivir en vano.
Voces (1943)

“The symphony he wrote here in Vienna especially for me will be regarded as a masterpiece for centuries to come; believe me, there are few people who can compose something like that.”

Joseph Martin Kraus (1756–1792) German composer

“All people believe their suffering is greater than others.”

Erica Jong (1942) Novelist, poet, memoirist, critic

How to Save Your Own Life (1977)

“Not believing others implies that you yourself are deceitful. The liar suffers twice: he neither believes nor is believed.”

Baltasar Gracián book The Art of Worldly Wisdom

Quanto que el no creer es indicio del mentir; porque el mentiroso tiene dos males, que ni cree ni es creído.
Maxim 154 (p. 87)
The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1647)

“The most dangerous of devotions, in my opinion, is the one endemic to Christianity: I was not born to be of this world. With a second life waiting, suffering can be endured- especially in other people. The natural environment can be used up. Enemies of the faith can be savaged and suicidal martyrdom praised.”

Edward O. Wilson (1929) American biologist

Source: Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (1998), p. 245.

“This vain presumption, of understanding everything, can have no other basis than never understanding anything.”

Kim Stanley Robinson book Galileo's Dream

For anyone who had experienced just once the understanding of one single thing, thus truly tasting how knowledge is accomplished, would then recognize that of the infinity of other truths, he understands nothing.
Source: Galileo's Dream (2009), Ch. 15, p. 354; note: though this statement is incorporated into the story as one Galileo spoke, it is actually a quotation of one he historically made in his Dialogue Concerning The Two Chief World Systems http://www4.ncsu.edu/~kimler/hi322/Dialogue-extracts.html as translated by Stillman Drake.

“I believe as firmly as I believe any other historical truth—that no nation ever suffered so much from another nation as the Irish have suffered from the English—or for so long a time.”

William Smith O'Brien (1803–1864) Irish nationalist politician (1803-1864)

14 January letter to John Martin: 14, Correspondence between John Martin and William Smith O'Brien relative to a French invasion, 1861 https://books.google.com/books?id=uioenbWx30MC&pg=PA14,