Dag Hammarskjold quotes

Born
29 July 1905 Jönköping, Sweden.

Died
18 September 1961.

Occupation
Diplomat.

Dag Hammarskjold was a Swedish diplomat who served as the second Secretary-General of the United Nations.

The more faithfully you listen to the voices within you, the better you will hear what is sounding outside.
– Dag Hammarskjold

Never, for the sake of peace and quiet, deny your own experience or convictions.
– Dag Hammarskjold

Praise those of your critics for whom nothing is up to standard.
– Dag Hammarskjold

A task becomes a duty from the moment you suspect it to be an essential part of that integrity which alone entitles a man to assume responsibility.
– Dag Hammarskjold

It is easy to be nice, even to an enemy – from lack of character.
– Dag Hammarskjold

Forgiveness is the answer to the child’s dream of a miracle by which what is broken is made whole again, what is soiled is made clean again.
– Dag Hammarskjold

We are not permitted to choose the frame of our destiny. But what we put into it is ours.
– Dag Hammarskjold

What makes loneliness an anguish is not that I have no one to share my burden, but this: I have only my own burden to bear.
– Dag Hammarskjold

In the last analysis, it is our conception of death which decides our answers to all the questions that life puts to us.
– Dag Hammarskjold

I never discuss discussions.
– Dag Hammarskjold

Friendship needs no words – it is solitude delivered from the anguish of loneliness.
– Dag Hammarskjold

‘Freedom from fear’ could be said to sum up the whole philosophy of human rights.
– Dag Hammarskjold

Pray that your loneliness may spur you into finding something to live for, great enough to die for.
– Dag Hammarskjold

I believe that we should die with decency so that at least decency will survive.
– Dag Hammarskjold

If only I may grow: firmer, simpler, quieter, warmer.
– Dag Hammarskjold

Constant attention by a good nurse may be just as important as a major operation by a surgeon.
– Dag Hammarskjold

Maturity – among other things, the unclouded happiness of the child at play, who takes it for granted that he is at one with his play-mates.
– Dag Hammarskjold

The breaking wave and the muscle as it contracts obey the same law. Delicate line gathers the body’s total strength in a bold balance. Shall my soul meet so severe a curve, journeying on its way to form?
– Dag Hammarskjold

Is life so wretched? Isn’t it rather your hands which are too small, your vision which is muddled? You are the one who must grow up.
– Dag Hammarskjold

Never look down to test the ground before taking your next step; only he who keeps his eye fixed on the far horizon will find the right road.
– Dag Hammarskjold

Time goes by, reputation increases, ability declines.
– Dag Hammarskjold

The longest journey is the journey inwards. Of him who has chosen his destiny, Who has started upon his quest for the source of his being.
– Dag Hammarskjold

God does not die on the day when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason.
– Dag Hammarskjold

Life yields only to the conqueror. Never accept what can be gained by giving in. You will be living off stolen goods, and your muscles will atrophy.
– Dag Hammarskjold

Only he deserves power who every day justifies it.
– Dag Hammarskjold

To forgive oneself? No, that doesn’t work: we have to be forgiven. But we can only believe this is possible if we ourselves can forgive.
– Dag Hammarskjold

Your cravings as a human animal do not become a prayer just because it is God whom you ask to attend to them.
– Dag Hammarskjold

It is playing safe that we create a world of utmost insecurity.
– Dag Hammarskjold

Never for the sake of peace and quiet deny your convictions.
– Dag Hammarskjold

Never measure the height of a mountain until you have reached the top. Then you will see how low it was.
– Dag Hammarskjold

It is more noble to give yourself completely to one individual than to labor diligently for the salvation of the masses.
– Dag Hammarskjold

The pursuit of peace and progress cannot end in a few years in either victory or defeat. The pursuit of peace and progress, with its trials and its errors, its successes and its setbacks, can never be relaxed and never abandoned.
– Dag Hammarskjold

Your position never gives you the right to command. It only imposes on you the duty of so living your life that others can receive your orders without being humiliated.
– Dag Hammarskjold

The more we do, the more we can do; the more busy we are, the more leisure we have.
– Dag Hammarskjold

The myths have always condemned those who ‘looked back.’ Condemned them, whatever the paradise may have been which they were leaving. Hence this shadow over each departure from your decision.
– Dag Hammarskjold

Destiny is something not be to desired and not to be avoided. a mystery not contrary to reason, for it implies that the world, and the course of human history, have meaning.
– Dag Hammarskjold

Everything will be all right – you know when? When people, just people, stop thinking of the United Nations as a weird Picasso abstraction and see it as a drawing they made themselves.
– Dag Hammarskjold