Quotes about suffering (3553 quotes, page 13)

“It has appeared that from the inevitable laws of our nature, some human beings must suffer from want. These are the unhappy persons who, in the great lottery of life, have drawn a blank.”

Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834) British political economist

Source: An Essay on The Principle of Population (First Edition 1798, unrevised), Chapter X, paragraph 29, lines 12-15

Life , Law , Nature , Appearance

“I did not hate the author of my misfortunes — truth and justice acquit me of that; I rather pitied the hard destiny to which he seemed condemned. But I thought with unspeakable loathing of those errors, in consequence of which every man is fated to be, more or less, the tyrant or the slave. I was astonished at the folly of my species, that they did not rise up as one man, and shake off chains so ignominious, and misery so insupportable. So far as related to myself, I resolved — and this resolution has never been entirety forgotten by me — to hold myself disengaged from this odious scene, and never fill the part either of the oppressor or the sufferer.”

William Godwin book Things as They Are; or, The Adventures of Caleb Williams

Caleb Williams (1794)

Hate , Fate , Truth , Justice

“In my job, you expect to suffer. That's why when I go to hell one day, it will be less painful for me than you, because I'm used to suffering.”

Arsène Wenger (1949) French footballer and manager

On Arsenal's summer, (2011) http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/14859401
Arsenal (1996–present)

Pain , Hell

“Love does not always choose the same dwelling place, it makes many exploits in men here below; It has its night, its day, and its many levels: only the one who has overall happiness is content. It moves, it suffers in God, its first cause and the unique happiness of the celestial Spirits; It is there that it is always equally enraptured, by the Seraphic love which is above all things.”

John of St. Samson (1571–1636)

From The Holy Sepulchre Canticle

Love , Men , God , Night

“We may suffer from a British sickness now, but we have a British constitution and it's still sound, and we have British hearts and a British will to win through. I believe in Britain. I believe in the British people. I believe in our future.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to the National Press Club (19 September 1975) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/102770
Leader of the Opposition
Context: In every generation there comes a moment to choose, and for too long we've chosen the soft option. And it's brought us pretty low. There are some signs now that our people are prepared to make the tough choice and to follow the harder road. We're still the same people that have fought for freedom, and won, and the spirit of adventure, the inventiveness, the determination are still strands in our character. We may suffer from a British sickness now, but we have a British constitution and it's still sound, and we have British hearts and a British will to win through. I believe in Britain. I believe in the British people. I believe in our future.

People , Future , Heart

“Suffering from an evident complex of moral inferiority, a lot of journalists are interested in teaching the Pope how to do the Pope. Suffering from an evident complex of moral superiority, a lot of priests are interested in teaching journalists how to do journalism. But the worst of all are the journalist-priests.”

Leon Bertoletti (1971)

Complexes http://www.hicsuntleones.co.uk/2009/03/complexes.html, Hic Sunt Leones, 22/03/2009

“Say, ‘This misery that I am suffering is of my own doing, and that very thing proves that it will have to be undone by me alone.’ That which I created, I can demolish; that which is created by someone else, I shall never be able to destroy. Therefore, stand up, be bold, be strong. Take the whole responsibility on your own shoulders, and know that you are the creators of your own destiny. All the strength and success you want is within ourselves.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

Strong , Success

“As the corporation's size and power grew, so did the need to assuage people's fears of it. The corporation suffered its first full-blown legitimacy crisis in the wake of the early-twentieth-century merger movement, when, for the first time, many Americans realized that corporations, now turned behemoths, threatened to overwhelm their social institutions and governments.”

Joel Bakan (1959) Canadian writer, musician, filmmaker and legal scholar

Source: The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power (2004), Chapter 1, The Corporation's Rise To Dominance, p. 17

People , Fear , Time

“Everyone with any experience of life is aware of the extent to which the characters of people he has known have been given their particular forms by the sufferings through which they have passed. But it is not simply what has happened to them that has defined them; their responses to what has happened to them have been of even greater importance, and these responses have been shaped by their interpretations of what they suffered.”

H. Richard Niebuhr (1894–1962) American theologian

Source: The Responsible Self: An Essay in Christian Moral Philosophy (1963), pp. 60-61

Life , People

“My brother need not be idealized or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life, to be remembered as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.”

Ted Kennedy (1932–2009) United States Senator

Eulogy for Robert F. Kennedy (8 June 1968)

Life , Death , War

“Apathetic Annie was complacent and serene
Though suffering from paresis,
Consumption and gangrene
But Annie did not really care
Though life was nearly gone
For Annie had a tumor of the diencephalon.”

Harry Harlow (1905–1981) American psychologist

an attempt to describe symptoms in poetry, while studying medicine at Stanford University in 1924
as quoted in Love at Goon Park https://books.google.ca/books?id=obODAAAAQBAJ&pg=PT26&lpg=PT26&dq=%22though+suffering+from+paresis%22&source=bl&ots=KLAHZqLzIR&sig=7U5NnYVatwD7LVa9ot5hrtfh828&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwii-YTTysTQAhWhgVQKHfY3CKEQ6AEIHTAA#v=onepage&q=%22though%20suffering%20from%20paresis%22&f=false, by Deborah Blum.

Life

“I fear my own conscience on Africa. I fear the judgement of future generations, where history properly calculates the gravity of the suffering. I fear them asking: but how could wealthy people, so aware of such suffering, so capable of acting, simply turn away to busy themselves with other things? What greater call to action could there be? Did they really know and yet do nothing? I feel that judgement of the future alongside the now. It gives me urgency. It fills me with determination.”

Tony Blair (1953) former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Prime Minister's website http://web.archive.org/20051103003809/www.number10.gov.uk/output/Page7314.asp
11 March 2005, at the launch of the Commission for Africa Report.
2000s

People , Fear , Feeling , History

“The lone wolf who knows no peace, these victims of unceasing pain to whom the urge for tragedy has been denied and who can never break through the starry space, who feel themselves summoned thither and yet cannot survive in its atmosphere-for them is reserved, provided suffering has made their spirits rough and elastic enough, a way of reconcilement and an escape into humor. Humor has always something bourgeois in it, although the true bourgeois in capable of understanding it.”

Hermann Hesse book Steppenwolf

Steppenwolf (1927)

Pain , Peace , Way , Feeling

“Life is truly known only to those who suffer, lose, endure adversity and stumble from defeat to defeat.”

Ryszard Kapuściński (1932–2007) Polish historian

A Warsaw Diary, in Granta [magazine], no. 15 (Cambridge, England, 1985)

Life

“How far down the evolutionary scale shall we go? Shall we eat fish? What about shrimps? Oysters? To answer these questions we must bear in mind the central principle on which our concern for other beings is based. As I said … the only legitimate boundary to our concern for the interests of other beings is the point at which it is no longer accurate to say that the other being has interests. To have interests, in a strict, nonmetaphorical sense, a being must be capable of suffering or experiencing pleasure. If a being suffers, there can be no moral justification for disregarding that suffering, or for refusing to count it equally with the like suffering of any other being. But the converse of this is also true. If a being is not capable of suffering, or of enjoyment, there is nothing to take into account.”

Peter Singer book Animal Liberation

Source: Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for our Treatment of Animals (1975), Ch. 4: Becoming a Vegetarian

Pleasure , Question , Sense , Fish

“Even today I wonder why those Germans didn't wait for me at the villa and send someone to look for me in Turin. It is because of their failure that I am still free and up here. Why I should have been saved and not Gallo, or Tono, or Cate, I don't know. Perhaps because I'm supposed to suffer for others? Because I'm the most useless and don't deserve anything, not even punishment? Because I went into a church that time? The experience of danger creates more cowards every day. It makes one stupid. I have reached the point of being alive only by chance, when many better men than I are dead, I don't like it, it's not enough. At time, after having listened to the useless radio and looked through the windows at the empty vineyards, I think that living by accident is not living, and I wonder if have really escaped.”

Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator

Source: The house on the hill (1949), Chapter 16, p. 144

Men , Stupidity , Failure , Thinking

“I think with all the odd jobs I ever had, there was some kind of enlightenment but, yes, a lot of pain and suffering that I don't want to re-live.”

David Boreanaz (1969) American actor, famous for Angel and Buffy

BBC interview

Pain , Thinking

“It is only because you are a machine that you suffer; and the purpose of suffering is to wake you up.”

Barry Long (1926–2003) Australian spiritual teacher and writer

Knowing Yourself: The True in the False (1996)

“Months later, Roger Cohen would write in The New York Time that preventing an attack on Banja Luka was "an acto of consummate Realpolitik" on our part, since letting the Federation [of Bosnia-Herzegovina] take the city would have "derailed" the peace process. Cohen, one of the most knowledgeable journalists to cover the was, misunderstood our motives in opposing an attack on Banja Luka. A true practitioner of Realpolitik would have encouraged the attack regardless of its human consequences. In fact, humanitarian concerns decided the case for me. Given the harsh behavior of Federation troops during the offensive, it seemed certain that the fall of Banja Luka would lead to forced evictions and random murders. I did not think the United States should contribute to the creation of new refugees and more human suffering in order to take a city that would have to be returned later. Revenge might be a central part of the ethos of the Balkans, but American policy could not be party of it. Our responsibility was to implement the American national interest, as best as we could determine it. But I am no longer certain we were right to oppose an attack on Banja Luka. Had we known then that the Bosnian Serbs would have been able to defy or ignore so many of the key political provisions of the peace agreement in 1996 and 1997, the negotiating team might not have opposed such an attack. However, even with American encouragement, it is by no means certain that an attack would have taken palce - or, if it had, that it would have been successful. Tuđman would have had to carry the burden of the attack, and the Serb lines were already stiffening. The Croatian Army had just taken heavy casualties on the Sarva. Furthermore, if it fell, Banja Luka would either have gone to the Muslims or been returned later to the Serbs, thus making it of dubious value to Tuđman. There was another intriguing factor in the equation - one of the few things that Milošević and Izetbegović had agreed on. Banja Luka, they both said, was the center of moderate, anti-Pale sentiment within the Bosnian Serb community, and should be built up in importance as a center of opposition to Pale. Izetbegovic himself was ambivalent about taking the city, and feared that if it fell, it would only add to Croat-Bosnian tensions.”

Richard Holbrooke (1941–2010) American diplomat

Source: 1990s, To End a War (1998), p. 166-167

Fear , Peace , Behavior , Communication

“I want to move forward, I don't want to move back. And I don't want to hurt the Clintons. I really don't. She went through a lot. And suffered greatly in many different ways. And I am not looking to hurt them at all. The campaign was vicious. They say it was the most vicious primary and the most vicious campaign. I guess, added together, it was definitely the most vicious; probably, I assume you sold a lot of newspapers. … It's just not something that I feel very strongly about. … I'm not looking to look back and go through this. This was a very painful period. This was a very painful election with all of the email things and all of the foundation things and all of the everything that they went through and the whole country went through. This was a very painful period of time.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

About not prosecuting Hillary Clinton.
2010s, 2016, November, New York Times Interview (November 23, 2016)

Pain , Way , Feeling , Time

“The consideration of human suffering is not one which enters into the calculations of primitive man.”

James Frazer book The Golden Bough

Source: The Golden Bough (1890), Chapter 64, The Burning of Human Beings in the Fires.

“It was silly to suppose that trials only hardened men, automatically making them wise. He knew many who were stupid, arrogant, and mean, in spite of having suffered.”

David Brin book The Uplift War

Source: The Uplift War (1987), Chapter 10 (p. 66)

Men , Stupidity

“I have found it; I have discovered the cause of all the misfortunes which befell him. A public school, Joseph, was the cause of all the calamaties which he afterwards suffered. Public schools are the nurseries of all vice and immorality.”

Henry Fielding book Joseph Andrews

Abraham Adams, speaking of his host, Wilson.
Book III, Ch. 5
Joseph Andrews (1742)

School

“The answers from Genesis tell us that there was no death, bloodshed, disease, or suffering before sin. All these things are a consequence of sin. That's why Christians can't believe in millions of years for the fossil record - it's a horrible record of death, disease, and suffering, which couldn't have happened in the Garden before Adam fell.”

Ken Ham (1951) Australian young Earth creationist

Did Adam have a Bellybutton?: And other tough questions about the Bible (2000)

Death , Disease

“Akbar was the first emperor to abolish Jizyah with one stroke of pen, along with all its associations and implications, including the distinction of Muslim and Dhimmî into the bargain. His son and grandson followed his example in regard to Jizyah, generally speaking, but reimposed upon the Hindus all the other restrictions and disabilities suffered by them before.”

Harsh Narain (1921–1995) Indian writer

Jizyah and the spread of Islam, 1990, chapter 3.

“When we feel overwhelmed by all the suffering in the world, or just drained by the stress of the day, do this. Close your eyes, breathe deeply, and know that the very breath you are taking is the same miracle of life that pervades all creation. He who gives you this breath, despite your anxieties, fears and pain, knows you. He knows you better than you will ever understand yourself. Breathe in, breathe out. You are experiencing the miracle. The most amazing miracle of all. The gift of life. All things will find harmony in this knowing, in this, is the whisper of not only all creation, but of the Creator.”

Michael Elmore-Meegan (1959) British humanitarian

All Will be Well (2004)

Life , Pain , World , Fear

“Happiness and suffering are states of mind and so their main causes are not to be found outside the mind.”

Kelsang Gyatso (1931) Tibetan writer and lama

Modern Buddhism: The Path of Compassion and Wisdom (2011)

Happiness

“We bow our heads in worship on this day and give thanks to the Almighty for the bounty He has bestowed upon us over the past year. We raise our voices in holy gladness to celebrate the victory of the risen Christ over the terrible forces of death. Easter is a joyful festival! It is a celebration because it is indeed a festival of hope! Easter marks the renewal of life! The triumph of the light of truth over the darkness of falsehood! Easter is a festival of human solidarity, because it celebrates the fulfilment of the Good News! The Good News borne by our risen Messiah who chose not one race, who chose not one country, who chose not one language, who chose not one tribe, who chose all of humankind! Each Easter marks the rebirth of our faith. It marks the victory of our risen Saviour over the torture of the cross and the grave. Our Messiah, who came to us in the form of a mortal man, but who by his suffering and crucifixion attained immortality. Our Messiah, born like an outcast in a stable, and executed like criminal on the cross. Our Messiah, whose life bears testimony to the truth that there is no shame in poverty: Those who should be ashamed are they who impoverish others. Whose life testifies to the truth that there is no shame in being persecuted: Those who should be ashamed are they who persecute others. Whose life proclaims the truth that there is no shame in being conquered: Those who should be ashamed are they who conquer others. Whose life testifies to the truth that there is no shame in being dispossessed: Those who should be ashamed are they who dispossess others. Whose life testifies to the truth that there is no shame in being oppressed: Those who should be ashamed are they who oppress others.”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

At his speech in Moria, on 3 April 1994
1990s, Speech at the Zionist Christian Church Easter Conference (1994)

Life , Death , Truth , Faith

“I was particularly keen to do what little I could to help your country after the collapse of Communism, having for so long held a combination of profound admiration and heartfelt sympathy for the appalling suffering of the Polish people.”

Lech Kaczyński (1949–2010) Polish politician, president of Poland

Prince Charles, to Kaczyński (March 2010)

People , Communication , Help , Country

“There is an outmoded Burmese proverb still recited by men who wish to deny that women too can play a part in bringing necessary change and progress to their society: "The dawn rises only when the rooster crows." But Burmese people today are well aware of the scientific reasons behind the rising of dawn and the falling of dusk. And the intelligent rooster surely realizes that it is because dawn comes that it crows and not the other way round. It crows to welcome the light that has come to relieve the darkness of night. It is not the prerogative of men alone to bring light to this world: women with their capacity for compassion and self-sacrifice, their courage and perseverance, have done much to dissipate the darkness of intolerance and hate, suffering and despair.”

Aung San Suu Kyi (1945) State Counsellor of Myanmar and Leader of the National League for Democracy

Opening Keynote Address at NGO Forum on Women, Beijing China (1995)

Women , Men , Hate , People

“[…] although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it. My optimism, then, does not rest on the absence of evil, but on a glad belief in the preponderance of good and a willing effort always to coöperate with the good, that it may prevail. I try to increase the power God has given me to see the best in everything and every one, and make that Best a part of my life.”

Helen Keller book Optimism

Optimism (1903)

Life , God , World , Optimism

“Therefore, it is necessary that infidelity should be cursed in order to serve the faith (Islam). Cursing unbelief in the heart is the lesser way. The greater way is to curse it in the heart as well as with the body. In short, cursing means to nourish enmity towards enemies of the true faith, whether that enmity is harboured in the heart when there is fear of injury from them (infidels), or it is harboured in the heart as well as served with the body when there is no fear of injury from them.
In the opinion of this recluse, there is no greater way to obtain the blessings of Allah than to curse the enemies of the faith (be impatient with them). For Allah himself harbours enmity towards the infidels and infidelity…
Once I went to visit a sick man who was close to death. When I meditated on him, I saw that his heart was layered with darknesses. I intended to remove those darknesses. But he was not yet ready for it… When I meditated more deeply, I discovered that those darknesses had gathered due to his friendship with the infidels. They could not be dispersed easily. He had to suffer torments of hell before he could get purged of them…”

Ahmad Sirhindi (1564–1624) Indian philosopher

Maktubat-i-Imam Rabbani translated into Urdu by Maulana Muhammad Sa’id Ahmad Naqshbandi, Deoband, 1988, Volume III, pp. 660-63. These passages are from a long letter in which Ahmad Sirhindi answered a large number of questions from his disciples.
From his letters

Death , Friendship , Fear , Faith

“The taste of self-inflicted suffering, of an evening trashed in spite, brought curious satisfactions. Other people stopped being real enough to carry blame for how you felt. Only you and your refusal remained. And like self-pity, or like the blood that filled your mouth when a tooth was pulled - the salty ferric juices that you swallowed and allowed yourself to savor - refusal had a flavor for which a taste could be acquired.”

Jonathan Franzen book The Corrections

The Corrections (2001)

People

“But man's helplessness remains and along with it his longing for his father, and the gods. The gods retain their threefold task: they must exorcise the terrors of nature, they must reconcile men to the cruelty of Fate, particularly as it is shown in death, and they must compensate them for the sufferings and privations which a civilized life in common has imposed on them.”

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian neurologist known as the founding father of psychoanalysis

1920s, The Future of an Illusion (1927)

Life , Death , Men , God

“Freud describes the neurotic personality of the late nineteenth century as one suffering from fragmentation – that is, from repression of instinctual drives, blocking off of awareness, loss of autonomy, weakness and passivity of the ego, together with the various neurotic symptoms which result from this fragmentation. “Kierkegaard-who wrote the only known book before Freud specifically devoted to the problem of anxiety-analyzes not only anxiety but particularly the depression and despair which result from the individual’s self-estrangement, an estrangement he proceeds to clarify in its different forms and degrees of severity. Nietzsche proclaims ten years before Freud’s first book that the disease of contemporary man is that “his soul had gone stale” he is – he describes how blocked instinctual powers turn within the individual into resentment, self-hatred, hostility and aggression. Freud did not know Kierkegaard’s work, but he regarded Nietzsche as one of the authentically great men of all time.””

Rollo May (1909–1994) US psychiatrist

Source: The Discovery of Being (1983), p. 60-61

Men , Hostility , Books , Disease

“The momentous meaning of this occasion impressed me deeply. I resolved to mark it by some token of recognition, which could be no other than a salute of arms. Well aware of the responsibility assumed, and of the criticisms that would follow, as the sequel proved, nothing of that kind could move me in the least. The act could be defended, if needful, by the suggestion that such a salute was not to the cause for which the flag of the Confederacy stood, but to its going down before the flag of the Union. My main reason, however, was one for which I sought no authority nor asked forgiveness. Before us in proud humiliation stood the embodiment of manhood: men whom neither toils and sufferings, nor the fact of death, nor disaster, nor hopelessness could bend from their resolve; standing before us now, thin, worn, and famished, but erect, and with eyes looking level into ours, waking memories that bound us together as no other bond;—was not such manhood to be welcomed back into a Union so tested and assured? Instructions had been given; and when the head of each division column comes opposite our group, our bugle sounds the signal and instantly our whole line from right to left, regiment by regiment in succession, gives the soldier's salutation, from the "order arms" to the old "carry"—the marching salute. Gordon at the head of the column, riding with heavy spirit and downcast face, catches the sound of shifting arms, looks up, and, taking the meaning, wheels superbly, making with himself and his horse one uplifted figure, with profound salutation as he drops the point of his sword to the boot toe; then facing to his own command, gives word for his successive brigades to pass us with the same position of the manual, honor answering honor. On our part not a sound of trumpet more, nor roll of drum; not a cheer, nor word nor whisper of vain-glorying, nor motion of man standing again at the order, but an awed stillness rather, and breath-holding, as if it were the passing of the dead!”

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain (1828–1914) Union Army general and Medal of Honor recipient

The Passing of the Armies: An account of the Army of the Potomac, based upon personal reminiscences of the Fifth Army Corps (1915), p. 260

Death , Men , Forgiveness , Memory

“If the penalty for even an accidental case [of abortion] is so severe, it is obvious that a deliberately induced abortion is very strongly forbidden. It is not necessary to ban deliberate abortion, since it is already eliminated by this law. Second, if a man who, in the course of a fight, unintentionally bumps a pregnant woman and causes her to abort, must suffer the death penalty, how much more so any person who intentionally induces an abortion?”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Source: Writings, The Institutes of Biblical Law (1973), pp. 263-264

Death , Law , Penalty , Fight

“It recalls to mind the statement by Winston Churchill, something to the effect that: I have benefited greatly from criticism, and at no time have I suffered a lack thereof.”

Donald Rumsfeld (1932) U.S. Secretary of Defense

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/08/AR2006110801579.html?nav=rss_politics
During the Nomination of Robert Gates for the next U.S. Secretary of Defense, November 8, 2006
2000s

Time

“Art remains a sure refuge, the hope of a reason in life from now on, and the consoling thought that little beauty manifests itself in our lives, and that we are continuing the work of Creation... Therefore the work of art has merit, inscribed in the marvelous beauty of flowers, of light, in the proportion of trees and shape of waves, and the perfection of faces; to inscribe our poor and lamentable life of suffering, of hope and of thought.”

Maurice Denis (1870–1943) French painter

Quote, 24 March 1895, from Denis' Journal; as cited on Wikipedia: Maurice Denis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Denis - reference [16]
1890 - 1920

Life , Beauty , Hope , Art

“I was born,” the Mouse said. “I must die. I am suffering. Help me. There, I just wrote your book for you.”

Samuel R. Delany book Nova

Source: Nova (1968), Chapter 5 (p. 156)

Books , Help

“Increase praying for the expediting of my manifestation because indeed it is your release from suffering.”

Muhammad al-Mahdi (869–941) 12th and last Imam in Twelver Shia Islam

Shaykh Sadūq, Kamāl ad-Dīn, Ch.2, p. 485
Religious-based Quotes

“Moreover, nothing is so rare as to see misfortune fairly portrayed; the tendency is either to treat the unfortunate person as though catastrophe were his natural vocation, or to ignore the effects of misfortune on the soul, to assume, that is, that the soul can suffer and remain unmarked by it, can fail, in fact, to be recast in misfortune's image.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), The Iliad or The Poem of Force (1940-1941), p. 193

Soul , Nature , Personality

“An exacting leader can always command more affection that one who is indifferent. The best way to impose severity is to have about one only those whose qualities one values. Any man ca easily endure criticism if his character and intelligence are clearly not called into question. To say quickly and forcefully what one feels strongly is the wise course. A sever reproach, if rapidly spoken, is less painful than hostile and sulky dissatisfaction. Subordinates must realize that if an order is not carried out they will suffer, but also that they will be exonerated if its execution leads to disaster. A true leader will always take full responsibility for his actions.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Leadership

Pain , Hostility , Way , Feeling

“There's a very strong connection between a lot of the evils of the modern world—factory farming, abuse against women—and the environment. We're destroying the female. If you think about the earth as a female organism which it is, in its totality, you know how we're disrespecting and abusing it. … [I have] very strong feelings about factory farming … I’m a vegetarian myself … I don’t want any kind of suffering of any living form but it’s more to do with the awareness that so much of the meat on the planet is being produced by factory farms. Animals are being pumped full of growth hormones which are then getting fed to our kids. And it’s affecting the water, environment. … We are being duped and controlled by huge multinationals that are concerned about the short term, not the long term and don’t care about the individual.”

Thandie Newton (1972) English actress

“The ‘superhero’ in feisty actress Thandie Newton,” interview with Inquirer.net (13 April 2013) http://entertainment.inquirer.net/89505/the-superhero-in-feisty-actress-thandie-newton.

Women , World , Feeling , Thinking

“Can we afford to let Laloo, whose knowledge of anything except caste structures is non-existent, damage the rural economy further? The long-suffering railway ministry, which has by now lost its ability to resist any absurd decision by any of their ministers, has agreed to budget Rs 250 crore a year to buy kulhars. While all that money comes from your pocket, where will it actually go?”

Maneka Gandhi (1956) Indian politician and activist

Criticising Railway Minister Lalu Prasad's plan to introduce disposable clay-cups or kulhars to serve tea in trains, as quoted in "Clay-Pot Dictator!" http://www.outlookindia.com/article/claypot-dictator/224296, Outlook India (28 June 2004)
2001-2010

Money , Knowledge , Decision

“…we … know very well that we never learn unless we like our lesson, and never behave ourselves unless inspired by precept and example. The history of every nation is the heritage of its sons and daughters; and the story of its struggles, sufferings, misdeeds, and glorious atonements is the story that keeps alive in all our hearts that sentiment of patriotism, without which we are speeding swiftly on our path to national corruption and decay.”

Agnes Repplier (1855–1950) American essayist

in "Old Wine and New" (May 1896)

History , Learning , Heart , Daughters

““I shall not be killed!” The count smiled scornfully, as if death were something that only others suffered.”

Michael Moorcock book The Jewel in the Skull

The Jewel in the Skull (1967)
Source: Book 1, Chapter 2 “Yisselda and Bowgentle” (p. 13)

Death , Smile

“Believe me, there is no such thing as great suffering, great regret, great memory…Everything is forgotten, even great love.”

Albert Camus book A Happy Death

A Happy Death (1971)

Love , Memory

“I am convinced that the majority of the religious hierarchy today deplores the hardship inflicted on our people. I am referring not only to the martyrs but of the families who have been dispersed and terrified, who have no resources, and to the four million unemployed who are suffering from the economic chaos of a country which only a year earlier was giving employment to a million foreigners. Those who have chosen to serve God must feel profoundly sad at seeing ridicule poured on the most sacred principles of our religion.”

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) Shah of Iran

Page 167
Publications, The Shah's Story (1980), On Islam and the Islamic Revolution

God , People , Sadness , Family

“I suffer fools gladly because I am one of them.”

Harry Secombe (1921–2001) British entertainer

Fools

“He subjected himself in sincerity to the good men whom he visited, and learned thoroughly where each surpassed him in zeal and discipline. He observed the graciousness of one; the unceasing prayer of another; he took knowledge of another's freedom from anger and another's loving-kindness; he gave heed to one as he watched, to another as he studied; one he admired for his endurance, another for his fasting and sleeping on the ground; the meekness of one and the long-suffering of another he watched with care, while he took note of the piety towards Christ and the mutual love which animated all. Thus filled, he returned to his own place of discipline, and henceforth would strive to unite the qualities of each, and was eager to show in himself the virtues of all.”

Athanasius of Alexandria (295–373) Patriarch of Alexandria

§ 4
Life of Anthony of Egypt

Love , Men , Knowledge , Sleep

“Bonaparte has often made his boast, that our fleet would be worn out by keeping the sea, that his was kept in order, and increasing, by staying in port; but he now finds, I fancy, if emperors hear truth, that his fleet suffers more in a night, than ours in one year; however, thank God, the Toulon fleet is got in order again, and I hear the troops embarked, and I hope they will come out to sea in fine weather.”

Horatio Nelson (1758–1805) Royal Navy Admiral

From a letter to Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood, written while aboard HMS Victory and dated (14 March 1805), quoted in full in The Naval History of Great Britain from the year 1783 to 1822 by Captain Edward Pelham Brenton (1824), Vol III, p. 406
1800s

God , Truth , Hope , Weather

“Unless the person is aiming upward, there is nothing you can do about their situation. And this seems to be about that initial choice between good and evil. Once someone comes to therapy, they've already done something. They've already said: I have a problem, conceivably I can fix it, and I need to do something about it. And so half the work is already done before they show up, because they've already said that 'things aren't as good as they could be, and I want to do something about it.' The question is, can you do anything about that person who is not at that state? You can't. All you can do is serve by example. But until the person has decided, on their own, that they're wrong (that's why they're suffering – there's something wrong about what they are doing) and that they want to fix it… I think that hammering against their situation often makes it worse. That's part of free will. I do not think that people can learn unless they admit that they're wrong.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

People , Question , Problem , Thinking

“It is true, likewise, that the English in general, and indeed most of the men of learning in Europe, have given up all accounts of witches and apparitions, as mere old wives' fables. I am sorry for it; and I willingly take this opportunity of entering my solemn protest against this violent compliment which so many that believe the Bible pay to those who do not believe it. I owe them no such service. I take knowledge these are at the bottom of the outcry which has been raised, and with such insolence spread throughout the nation, in direct opposition not only to the Bible, but to the suffrage of the wisest and best of men in all ages and nations. They well know (whether Christians know it or not), that the giving up witchcraft is, in effect, giving up the Bible; and they know, on the other hand, that if but one account of the intercourse of men with separate spirits be admitted, their whole castle in the air (Deism, Atheism, Materialism) falls to the ground. I know no reason, therefore, why we should suffer even this weapon to be wrested out of our hands. Indeed there are numerous arguments besides, which abundantly confute their vain imaginations. But we need not be hooted out of one; neither reason nor religion require this.”

John Wesley (1703–1791) Christian theologian

Nehemiah Curnock, ed., 'The Journal of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M.', London, Charles H. Kelly, vol. 5, p. 265 https://archive.org/stream/a613690405wesluoft#page/265/mode/1up (entry of 25 May 1768)
General sources

Men , Age , Religion , Imagination

“But the real, tremendous truth is this: suffering serves no purpose whatever.”

Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

Truth

“O wise among all Angels ordinate,
God foiled of glory, god betrayed by fate,
Satan, O pity my long wretchedness!
O Prince of Exile doomed to heinous wrong,
Who, vanquished, riseth ever stark and strong,
Satan, O pity my long wretchedness!
Thou knowest all, proud king of occult things,
Familiar healer of man's sufferings,
Satan, O pity my long wretchedness!
Thy love wakes thirst for Heaven in one and all:
Leper, pimp, outcast, fool and criminal,
Satan, O pity my long wretchedness!”

Charles Baudelaire book Les Fleurs du mal

Ô toi, le plus savant et le plus beau des Anges,
Dieu trahi par le sort et privé de louanges,Ô Satan, prends pitié de ma longue misère!Ô Prince de l'exil, à qui l'on a fait tort
Et qui, vaincu, toujours te redresses plus fort,Ô Satan, prends pitié de ma longue misère!Toi qui sais tout, grand roi des choses souterraines,
Guérisseur familier des angoisses humaines,Ô Satan, prends pitié de ma longue misère!Toi qui, même aux lépreux, aux parias maudits,
Enseignes par l'amour le goût du Paradis,Ô Satan, prends pitié de ma longue misère!
"Les Litanies de Satan" [Litanies of Satan] http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Les_Litanies_de_Satan
Les fleurs du mal (Flowers of Evil) (1857)

Love , God , Fate , Fools

“I have three dogs, and to see some of the videos or go online and research how animals are treated for fur, the cruelty is worse than torture. I think it’s right that NFL players—with the platform that we have—can [spread] awareness that animals have lives and souls and they go through pain and suffering just as humans do, and they need to be treated accordingly. A lot of people think [that] wearing a fur is expensive, but you don’t know how expensive it is—lives are priceless. … Protecting animals is definitely something that in America we need to step up and do a better job of.”

Maurice Jones-Drew (1985) All-American college football player, professional football player, running back, kick returner

"NFL Star Maurice Jones-Drew Chooses 'Ink, Not Mink'" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0qJ0k8gaxg, video interview with PETA (5 November 2013).

Pain , People , Dogs , Soul

“I think the verdict that has been given against me is a proof that I am more than ordinary myself, but that the circumstances and the help that is given is more than ordinary, are more than ordinary, and although I consider myself only as others, yet by the will of God, by his Providence, by the circumstances which have surrounded me for fifteen years, I think that I have been called to do something which at least in the North-West nobody has done yet, and in some way I think that to a certain number of people the verdict against me to day is a proof that maybe I am a prophet, maybe Riel is a prophet. He suffers for it.”

Louis Riel (1844–1885) Canadian politician

Address on sentencing (1885)

God , People , Way , Thinking

“I have… instituted systematic, voluntary measures of cooperation with the business institutions and with State and municipal authorities to make certain that fundamental businesses of the country shall continue as usual, that wages and therefore consuming power shall not be reduced, and that a special effort shall be made to expand construction work in order to assist in equalizing other deficits in employment… I am convinced that through these measures we have reestablished confidence. Wages should remain stable. A very large degree of industrial unemployment and suffering which would otherwise have occurred has been prevented. Agricultural prices have reflected the returning confidence. The measures taken must be vigorously pursued until normal conditions are restored.”

Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) 31st President of the United States of America

State of the Union Address (3 December 1929)

Confidence , Business , Effort , Country

“General Grievous," a bad guy so sinister, his very name stands for PAIN AND SUFFERING. Nice job assholes… Why not just call all your characters "Evil" and "Bad" next time?”

Maddox (1978) American internet writer

Star Wars Episode III: a steaming pile of Sith http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=episode3
The Best Page in the Universe

Pain , Guy , Evil , Time

“Just like what Nazi Germany did to the Jews, so liberal America is now doing to the evangelical Christians! It's no different! It is the same thing! It is happening all over again! It is the Democratic Congress, the liberal-based media and the homosexuals who want to destroy the Christians! Wholesale abuse and discrimination and the worst bigotry directed toward any group in America today! More terrible than anything suffered by any minority in history! … And it is happening here and now! Same thing, but directed against Christians by the liberal government and media! Send money today or these liberals will be putting Christians like you and me in concentration camps!”

Pat Robertson (1930) American media mogul, executive chairman, and a former Southern Baptist minister

quoted in * 1993-09-15
Molly
Ivins
Molly Ivins
Toss (some of 'em) to the lions
The Tuscaloosa News
6A
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1817&dat=19930915&id=qIIfAAAAIBAJ&sjid=hqUEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6445,4278412

Money , History

“There are few people who are more often wrong than those who cannot suffer being wrong.”

François de La Rochefoucauld book Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims

Il n'y a point de gens qui aient plus souvent tort que ceux qui ne peuvent souffrir d'en avoir.
Maxim 386.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)

People

“To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering, one must not love. But, then one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer, not to love is to suffer, to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love, to be happy, then, is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy, therefore, to be unhappy one must love, or love to suffer, or suffer from too much happiness — I hope you're getting this down.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

Love and Death (1975)

Love , Hope , Happiness

“And therefore, even though animals are in pain, they aren't aware of it. They don't have this third order pain awareness. They are not aware of pain, and therefore they do not suffer as human beings do. Now, this is a tremendous comfort to those of us who are animal lovers, like myself, or to pet owners. Even though your dog or your cat may be in pain, it isn't really aware of being in pain, and therefore it doesn't suffer as you would when you are in pain.”

William Lane Craig (1949) American Christian apologist and evangelist

"Does God Exist?" debate vs Stephen Law, Westminster Central Hall, London, , quoted in * 2012-10-04
William Lane Craig argues that animals can’t feel pain
Jerry
Coyne
Jerry Coyne
Why Evolution Is True
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/10/04/william-lane-craig-argues-that-animals-cant-feel-pain/
2013-03-07

Pain , Dogs , Cats , Lovers

“Now there's no point in placing the blame
And you should know I'd suffer the same”

Madonna (1958) American singer, songwriter, and actress

Frozen (February 23, 1998) from the album Ray of Light (March 3, 1998), cowritten with Patrick Leonard.

“The central problem of the Greek tragedies is why we suffer so at the hands of God. The movement that evoked Greek tragedy in the fifth century B. C. was spread over the East Mediterranean evoking a parallel response in Israel. …And as in Greek tragedy, Job deals with the problem of why man suffers so at the had of God.”

Cyrus H. Gordon (1908–2001) American linguist

Source: The Common Background of Greek and Hebrew Civilizations (1965 [1962]), Ch.VIII Further Observations on the Bible

God , Problem

“And see, a kind, refined lady will devour the carcasses of these animals with full assurance that she is doing right, at the same time asserting two contradictory propositions: First, that she is, as her doctor assures her, so delicate that she cannot be sustained by vegetable food alone, and that for her feeble organism flesh is indispensable; and, secondly, that she is so sensitive that she is unable, not only herself to inflict suffering on animals, but even to bear the sight of suffering. Whereas the poor lady is weak precisely because she has been taught to live upon food unnatural to man; and she cannot avoid causing suffering to animals — for she eats them.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Source: The First Step (1892), Ch. IX

Food , Time , Animals

“The last 20 years have· seen an enormous growth of institutions devoted to anthropological enterprises, membership within the discipline, and students, text books, and paraphernalia. From a tiny scholarly group that could easily be fitted into a couple of buses, and most of whom knew each other, we have grown into a group of tremendous, anonymous milling crowds, meeting at large hotels where there are so many sessions that people do well to find those of their colleagues who are interested in the same specialty. Today we look something like the other social science disciplines, suffering some of the same malaise, and becoming cynical about slave markets and worried when grants and jobs seem to be declining.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: 1970s, Changing Styles of Anthropological Work, 1973, p. 1

People , Books , Science

“Youth's first acquaintance with sorrow is a terrible thing—before time has taught, what it will surely teach, that grief is our natural portion, at once transitory and eternal. But the first lesson is the severest—we have not then looked among our fellows, and seen that suffering is general; and we feel as if marked out by fate for misery that has no parallel.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)

Fate , Youth , Feeling , Nature

“The pain and suffering inflicted on children by the American diet is so brutal that if it were administered with a stick, parents would be put in jail.”

John A. McDougall (1947) American physician

“Vegan Diet Damages Baby's Brain—Sensationalism!,” in VegNews (March–April 2003), p. 10; as quoted in Will Tuttle, The World Peace Diet (Lantern Books, 2005), p. 66 https://books.google.it/books?id=BTqLjAOwsSMC&pg=PA66.

Pain , Children , Parent

“If somehow we could snap our fingers and there would no longer be any drugs in the world whatsoever, would there be no more addiction? Would there be no more suffering? Or is it possible that addiction is not really about drugs, that addiction is really about the relationships that human beings form with one another and all sorts of things? That it's about the difference between establishing good relationships and bad relationships? Who is going to be in control? Who is going to say what this relationship should be between ourselves and these plants and chemicals and substances?… Is this a decision that we just put in the hands of government? Is this a decision we put just in the hands of doctors? Just in the hands of the pharmaceutical companies, the tobacco companies, the alcohol companies and all the other corporations that profit off of the production and sale of these things? The true challenge is how do we learn to live with these substances in such a way that they cause the least possible harm and the greatest possible good. What will cause people to wake up and say "Stop?" What will cause people to say, "Enough is enough?"”

Ethan Nadelmann (1957) American writer; campaigner for the legalization of marijuana

What will cause people to say, "I value my freedom even if that freedom involves a measure of risk?"
Video address, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBW07ITbagc hosted on YouTube http://www.youtube.com by user "droppingknowledge."
The War on Drugs

People , Alcohol , World , Way

“Whatever you may suffer, speak the truth. Be worthy of the entire confidence of your associates. Consider what is right as to what must be done. It is not necessary that you should keep your property, or even your life, but it is necessary that you should hold fast your integrity.”

William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) United States Unitarian clergyman

Memoir of William Ellery Channing: With Extracts from His Correspondence and Manuscripts (1848), Vol. II. Part III. Chapter VII: Home Life

Life , Truth , Confidence

“We commemorate a man, a leader, who in the years of creation and achievement towered above his contemporaries in figure and manner, in voice and power, who worked and fought, and who suffered—as they all suffered who dared to preach socialism in an unreceptive and hostile age. He was a man who had vision, and dared all in those years to make that vision a reality; a man who inspired affection in his associates as in his own domestic circle, and who, daring all, created a lasting and durable political instrument which today 60 years after its first political success, provides the Government of this country and in so providing owes more than many are prepared to admit to the young Ramsay MacDonald.”

Harold Wilson (1916–1995) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech at a luncheon in the House of Commons to commemorate the centenary of Ramsay MacDonald's birth (12 October 1966), quoted in The Times (13 October 1966), p. 12.
Prime Minister

Hostility , Age , Reality , Success

“"Among the types of human activity which have always played a role in history, the soldier is least subject to ressentiment. Nietzsche is right in pointing out that the priest is most exposed to this danger, though the conclusions about religious morality which he draws from this insight are inadmissible. It is true that the very requirements of his profession, quite apart from his individual or national temperament, expose the priest more than any other human type to the creeping poison of ressentiment. In principle he is not supported by secular power; indeed he affirms the fundamental weakness of such power. Yet, as the representative of a concrete institution, he is to be sharply distinguished from the homo religiosus—he is placed in the middle of party struggle. More than any other man, he is condemned to control his emotions (revenge, wrath, hatred) at least outwardly, for he must always represent the image and principle of “peacefulness.” The typical “priestly policy” of gaining victories through suffering rather than combat, or through the counterforces which the sight of the priest's suffering produces in men who believe that he unites them with God, is inspired by ressentiment. There is no trace of ressentiment in genuine martyrdom; only the false martyrdom of priestly policy is guided by it. This danger is completely avoided only when priest and homo religiosus coincide."”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912)

Men , God , Peace , History

“I affirm, therefore, that our present position is one of apostasy; and to give the ballot to the negro will be no innovation, but a return to the old paths, a restoration of that spirit of liberty to which the sufferings and sacrifices of the Revolution gave birth.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1860s, Oration at Ravenna, Ohio (1865)

Birth

“Interviewer: About fishing … do you avoid campaigning against it because there isn’t a ground-swell movement in our culture to eliminate it?
Wayne Pacelle That is correct. We’re out to minimize suffering wherever it can be done, and wherever our limited resources can be utilized most effectively—abusive forms of hunting for now, all hunting eventually.”

Wayne Pacelle (1965) American activist

Interview in "Bloodties: Nature, Culture, and the Hunt," 1994

Fish

“What's more important for me is the brand name Lucy Aharish. The Arab sector does not pay me a salary. My national identity is that of an Arab-Israeli. I identify with Palestinian suffering, but I am not part of it. I have a different suffering here: I am not getting the rights that accrue to me as a citizen of Israel – such as better mortgage terms – because I did not do army service.”

Lucy Aharish (1981) Arab-Israeli journalist

Parting

“‘Brethren, if outsiders should speak against me, or against the Doctrine, or against the Order, you should not on that account either bear malice, or suffer heart-burning, or feel ill will. If you, on that account, should be angry and hurt, that would stand in the way of your, own self-conquest. If, when others speak against us, you feel angry at that, and displeased, would you then be able to judge how far that speech of theirs is well said or ill?’
‘That would not be so, Sir.’
‘But when outsiders speak in dispraise of me, or of the Doctrine, or of the Order, you should unravel what is false and point it out as wrong, saying: “For this or that reason this is not the fact, that is not so, such a thing is not found among us, is not in us.”
‘But also, brethren, if outsiders should speak in praise of me, in praise of the Doctrine, in praise of the Order, you should not, on that account, be filled with pleasure or gladness, or be lifted up in heart. Were you to be so that also would stand in the way of your self-conquest. When outsiders speak in praise of me, or of the Doctrine, or of the Order, you should acknowledge what is right to be the fact, saying: “For this or that reason this is the fact, that is so, such a thing is found among us, is in us.””

Gautama Buddha (-563–-483 BC) philosopher, reformer and the founder of Buddhism

T. W. Rhys Davids trans. (1899), Brahmajāla Sutta, verse 1.5-6 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Brahmajala_Sutta#Brahmaj.C4.81la_Sutta_.5B9.5D_-_The_Perfect_Net (text at archive.org https://archive.org/stream/bookofdiscipline02hornuoft#page/3/mode/1up), as cited in: (1992). A Comparative History of Ideas, p. 221-2
Source: Pali Canon, Sutta Pitaka, Digha Nikaya (Long Discourses)

Pleasure , Way , Feeling , Heart

“Crewmates, by now we are hardly strangers to evil and hardship.
We've suffered worse. God will grant us an end to these sufferings also. …
Take heart once again and dispel your fears and depression.
Maybe the day'll come when even this will be joy to remember.”

Frederick Ahl (1941) Professor of classics and comparative literature

Translation of Virgil's Aeneid (2007), Book I, lines 198–199 and 202–203

God , Fear , Evil , Heart

“Veterans of every war suffer Battered Man Syndrome in the form of posttraumatic stress disorder. The emotional consequences are also with them for years. But if a sufferer killed Admiral Zumwalt for ordering the spraying of Agent Orange, he would be convicted for murder. Men who suffer Battered Man Syndrome are not allowed to attack their abuser and call it self-defense.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part III: Government as substitute husband, p. 264.

Men , War

“God of our fathers, you chose Abraham and his descendants to bring your Name to the Nations: we are deeply saddened by the behaviour of those who in the course of history have caused these children of yours to suffer, and asking your forgiveness we wish to commit ourselves to genuine brotherhood with the people of the Covenant.”

Pope John Paul II (1920–2005) 264th Pope of the Catholic Church, saint

Written prayer placed by the pope into the Western Wall in Jerusalem on 26 March 2000, during his apostolic journey to the Holy Land
Source: Libreria Editrice Vaticana http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/travels/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_20000326_jerusalem-prayer_en.html

God , Children , People , History

“He who foresees calamities suffers them twice over.”

Robert J. Sawyer book Flashforward

Source: Flashforward (1999), Chapter 1 epigram (p. 9; quoting Beilby Porteus)

“Beware lest ye suffer one another to be wrapt in veils by reason of the disputes which may, during your night, arise among you as a result of the problems ye encounter or in consideration of such matters as your loftiness or lowliness, your nearness or remoteness.
Thus have We firmly exhorted you — a befitting exhortation indeed — that haply ye may cleave tenaciously unto it and attain thereby salvation on the Day of Resurrection.”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

XVI, 19
The Kitáb-I-Asmá

Problem , Night

“The pathology of Western intellectuals has committed them to an adversarial relationship with the culture - free markets and individual rights - that has produced the greatest alleviation of suffering; the greatest liberation from want, ignorance, and superstition; and the greatest increase of bounty and opportunity in the history of all human life. This pathology allows Western intellectuals to step around the Everest of bodies of the victims of Communism without a tear, a scruple, a regret, an act of contrition, or a reevaluation of self, soul, and mind.”

Alan Charles Kors (1943) American academic

As quoted in "Notable & Quotable: The Victims of Socialism" https://web.archive.org/web/20160217064704/http://www.wsj.com/articles/notable-quotable-the-victims-of-socialism-1455667462 (17 February 2016), The Wall Street Journal, A13
2000s, Can There Be an "After Socialism"? (2003)

Life , Soul , History , Communication

“The change needs to be from within us otherwise the generations to come will suffer.”

Manav Gupta (1967) Indian artist

As quoted in "Beyond Politics, Beyond Copenhagen, For Our Children" : Treatise, Travelling trilogy, Lectures and Films on Sustainable development by Manav Gupta (2009 -2010), as quoted in Hindustan Times (29 December 2009)
2000s

Change

“The claims of the most backward sections like the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, who have suffered neglect and have hard to endure disabilities for many centuries. It would be my proud privilege to work for the establishment of a more just social order.”

Lal Bahadur Shastri (1904–1966) The second Prime Minister of the Republic of India and a leader of the Indian National Congress party

Untouchability

“Today more than ninety per cent of all large animals are domesticated. Consider the chicken, for example. Ten thousand years ago it was a rare bird confined to small niches of South Asia. Today billions of chickens live on almost every continent and island, bar Antarctica. The domesticated chicken is probably the most widespread bird in the annals of planet Earth. If you measure success in terms of numbers, chickens, cows and pigs are the most successful animals ever. Alas, domesticated species paid for their unparalleled collective success with unprecedented individual suffering.”

Yuval Noah Harari (1976) Israeli historian

Introduction to Animal Liberation

Bird , Success , Animals

“When one exchanged the rowing-seat for a place in the bottom of the boat, he suffered a bodily depression that caused him to be careless of everything save an obligation to wiggle one finger. There was cold sea-water swashing to and fro in the boat, and he lay in it. His head, pillowed on a thwart, was within an inch of the swirl of a wave crest, and sometimes a particularly obstreperous sea came in-board and drenched him once more. But these matters did not annoy him. It is almost certain that if the boat had capsized he would have tumbled comfortably out upon the ocean as if he felt sure it was a great soft mattress.”

Stephen Crane book The Open Boat

Pt. IV
The Open Boat (1894)

Water , Sea

“All which she entreats, for His Sake, to be done,
Who suffer'd to save them, Christ Jesus, His Son,—
In respect to the World, the Redeemer of All;
"To the Church of the Faithful, most chiefly," saith Paul;
And to them who shall suffer, whoever they be,
In the Spirit of Christ, in the highest Degree.
How ought such a Goodness all Minds to prepare
For an hearty "Amen" to this Catholic Pray'r!”

John Byrom (1692–1763) Poet, inventor of a shorthand system

Source: Miscellaneous Poems (1773), A Paraphrase on the Prayer used in The Church Liturgy for All Sorts and Conditions Of Men, IX

World , Faith , Christ

“Today, there is no greater injustice than that suffered by the 4,000 babies, 1,400 of them black, who die on any given day at the hands of abortionists. Friday, we will stand witness in front of the White House and testify to President Obama and that while he is living his dreams, those babies will be dying horrible deaths because of the policies he supports. I see the pride on African American faces everywhere, pride in the tremendous breakthrough President Obama represents," added Dr. King. "But I also can close my eyes and see the millions upon millions of young black, white, red, and yellow faces who never had the chance to live, overcome, or witness history.”

Alveda King (1951) American, civil rights activist, Christian minister, conservative, pro-life activist, and author

Dr. Alveda King featured speaker at prolife rally http://www.speroforum.com/a/17811/Dr-Alveda-King-featured-speaker-at-prolife-rally#.WH0nsFMrLIU (January 22, 2009)

Death , Dreams , History , Support

“I was born in a Muslim family and Muslim women suffer under Islam.”

Taslima Nasrin (1962) Poet, columnist, novelist

" Islam is history: Taslima https://web.archive.org/web/20060830195422/http://www.teluguportal.net/modules/news/article.php?storyid=10896", Telugu Portal (22 August, 2006).

Women , Family

“Why should I be more ‘cautious, careful,’ as you say? I stay in the big leagues as long as I do because I play only one way. I know I take too many, maybe. I know I should not sometimes dive for the ball—or hit the wall trying to catch it— as much as I do. But you catch the ball, you help your team. You don’t catch it, you don’t help your team. I believe playing, how you say, ‘all out’ has prolonged my career. If a ballplayer starts loafing, he tends to lose that little push that is so necessary, so important. You get lazy, won’t take even the smallest chance; kind of lose interest. Your rhythm, I guess it is, gets all messed up. Fly balls start falling on you, when they should not. And you find yourself not getting around on the ball like you should. Once you lose this ‘little push,’ then it is awfully hard to get back in the groove… get yourself going again. Your ambition – desire – suffers. And you become the kind of ballplayer you don’t want to be.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted in "‘Never Let Up,’ Says Clemente" by Hal Hayes, in The Atlanta Constitution (Tuesday, May 5, 1970), p. 2-C
Baseball-related, <big><big>1970s</big></big>, <big>1970</big>

Way , Chance , Help , Flying

“Your first duties-first as regards importance-are, as I have already told you, towards Humanity. You are men before you are either citizens or fathers. If you do not embrace the whole human family in your affection, if you do not bear witness to your belief in the Unity of that family, consequent upon the Unity of God…if, wheresoever a fellow-creature suffers, or the dignity of human nature is violated by falsehood or tyranny-you are not ready, if able, to aid the unhappy, and do not feel called upon to combat, if able, for the redemption of the betrayed or oppressed-you violate your law of life, you comprehend not that Religion which will be the guide and blessing of the future.”

Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–1872) Italian patriot, politician and philosopher

On the Duties of Man (1844-58)

Life , Men , God , Family

“Human life is reduced to real suffering, to hell, only when two ages, two cultures and religions overlap.”

Hermann Hesse book Steppenwolf

Source: Steppenwolf (1927), p. 22

Life , Age , Religion , Hell

“I do not know a greater fault in the nurture of children than the conniving at the wanton acts of barbarity which they practise at an early age upon innocent insects; the judgment of that parent must be exceedingly defective, or strangely perverted, who can proportion the degree of cruelty to the smallness of the creature that unfortunately becomes the sufferer. It is but a fly, perhaps he may say, when he sees his child pluck off its wings or its legs by way of amusement; it is but a fly, and cannot feel much pain; besides the infant would cry if I was to take it from him, and that might endanger his health, which surely is of more consequence than many flies: but I fear worse consequences are to be dreaded by permitting it to indulge so vicious an inclination, for as it grows up, the same cruelty will in all likelihood be extended to larger animals, and its heart by degrees made callous to every claim of tenderness and humanity.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 388
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Cruelty to insects

Pain , Children , Health , Age

“For as long as space remains
And as long as sentient beings remain
Until then may I too remain
To dispel the suffering of all beings.”

Šantidéva (685–763) 8th-century Indian Buddhist monk and scholar

Attributed

“Power is in nature the essential measure of right. Nature suffers nothing to remain in her kingdoms which cannot help itself. The genesis and maturation of a planet, its poise and orbit, the bended tree recovering itself from the strong wind, the vital resources of every animal and vegetable, are demonstrations of the self-sufficing, and therefore self-relying soul.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Self-Reliance

Soul , Nature , Tree , Strong

“Oh my friends, the down-trodden operatives of Coketown! Oh my friends and fellow-countrymen, the slaves of an ironhanded and a grinding despotism! Oh my friends and fellow-sufferers, and fellow-workmen, and fellow-men! I tell you that the hour is come, when we must rally round one another as One united power, and crumble into dust the oppressors that too long have battened upon the plunder of our families, upon the sweat of our brows, upon the labour of our hands, upon the strength of our sinews, upon the God-created glorious rights of Humanity, and upon the holy and eternal privileges of Brotherhood!”

Charles Dickens book Hard Times

Bk. II, Ch. 4
Hard Times (1854)

Men , God , Family

“Enoch Powell: Now, we were invaded by the Danes, they did alter the country and we fought them for two hundred years. If that's what is meant – to be allowed to happen?
Marghanita Laski: Were we wise to do so? Didn't they add to us in the end? Wasn't there much more suffering and misery because we fought them?
Enoch Powell: Only because we fought them, and eventually subjugated them and Christianised them.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

applause
Any Questions?, BBC Radio (29 November 1968), from Reflections of a Statesman. The Writings and Speeches of Enoch Powell (London: Bellew, 1991), p. 396
1960s

Country

“The universe appears to me like an immense, inexorable torture-garden…Passions, greed, hatred, and lies; social institutions, justice, love, glory, heroism, and religion: these are its monstrous flowers and its hideous instruments of eternal human suffering.”

Octave Mirbeau (1848–1917) French journalist, art critic, travel writer, pamphleteer, novelist, and playwright

Garden of Tortures

Love , Religion , Justice , Flowers

Quotes about suffering page 13

Quotes about suffering
page 13