Did Edward Elric Really Say “A Lesson Without Pain Is Meaningless”?

Yes in substance, but not in that wording. As Wikiquote's Brotherhood transcription records it, Edward Elric speaks the closing lines of the anime about a painless lesson, sacrifice and a heart made fullmetal. The sentence that circulates, beginning "A lesson without pain is meaningless," does not appear in that transcription or in Wikiquote's manga page, and no source we could read identifies whose translation it is.

What the anime transcription records

Wikiquote files the passage under "Journey's End," episode 64 of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, marks it as the final lines of the series and credits it to Edward. Its wording reads: "There’s no such thing as a painless lesson. They just don’t exist. Sacrifices are necessary. You can’t gain anything without losing something first although if you can endure that pain and walk away from it, you’ll find that you now have a heart strong enough to overcome any obstacle. Yeah, a heart made fullmetal." Anime News Network's episode list gives episode 64 as "The Journey's End." The Wikiquote page does not say which English track its text comes from, so this is an English transcription, not a certified dub or subtitle line.

The shorter version on the manga page

Wikiquote's manga page records a shorter version as narration rather than as Edward's dialogue, in its section headed "The Two Alchemists," after the failed experiment that costs Edward his leg and Alphonse his body: "A painless lesson is one without any meaning. One who does not sacrifice anything cannot achieve anything." That page does not name a translation either, so it cannot be treated as the licensed English edition. Read together, the two records give the idea to a narrator in the first section of Wikiquote's manga page and to Edward at the close of the 2009–2010 anime.

Where the circulating wording sits

The popular version continues "But by enduring that pain and overcoming it, he shall obtain a powerful, unmatched heart. A fullmetal heart." It speaks about Edward in the third person, where the anime transcription has him address the listener as "you." The wording is reproduced on Goodreads, a user-submitted quote site that credits it to Hiromu Arakawa and files it with volume 25 of the manga. A user-submitted listing is not evidence of a translation, and we have not confirmed that volume placement. The sentence may come from a licensed edition, a subtitle track or a fan translation; nothing we could read settles which.

Who says it

Crediting the line to Edward is fair for the anime, where the transcription gives him the closing words. For the manga the transcription labels the shorter version as narration, which is a different answer to the same question. The transcriptions show a difference of speaker between the two records; they do not show whether the manga gives the passage to anyone else elsewhere, because only the first section of the manga page carries it and the licensed VIZ text was not compared.

What we could not check

We did not compare the licensed VIZ manga text, a licensed English episode track or the Japanese dialogue. Library scans of the VIZ volumes exist but were not readable to us, so the verdict rests on the two Wikiquote transcriptions. The rest of the checked Edward lines are on his character page, and the closing episodes are covered on the finale quotes page. The verdict is logged in the fact-check database, and the verification method explains why a transcription is not treated as a named dub or edition.