Dag Hammarskjold was a Swedish diplomat who served as the second Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1953 until his death in a plane crash in 1961. He was the first Secretary-General to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize posthumously in 1961 for his peacekeeping efforts. He is remembered for his strong commitment to the principles of the UN and his efforts to promote international peace and security.
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Top 10 Dag Hammarskjold Quotes
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Life Lessons
Famous Dag Hammarskjold Quotes
Top 10 Dag Hammarskjold Quotes
Friendship needs no words...
Constant attention by a good nurse may be just as important as a major operation by a surgeon.
We are not permitted to choose the frame of our destiny. But what we put into it is ours.
I believe that we should die with decency so that at least decency will survive.
The UN wasn't created to take mankind into paradise, but rather, to save humanity from hell.
Life yields only to the conqueror.
Do not seek death. Death will find you. But seek the road which makes death a fulfillment.
I am the vessel. The draft is God's. And God is the thirsty one.
In our era, the road to holiness necessarily passes through the world of action.
Perhaps a great love is never returned.
Dag Hammarskjold Famous Quotes And Sayings
It is playing safe that we create a world of utmost insecurity. — 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
We've got to learn hard things in our lifetime, but it's love that gives you the strength. It's being nice to people and having a lot of fun and laughing harder than anything, hopefully every single day of your life. — 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
Life only demands from you the strength that you possess. Only one feat is possible; not to run away. — Dag Hammarskjold
You cannot play with the animal in you without becoming wholly animal, play with falsehood without forfeiting your right to truth, play with cruelty without losing your sensitivity of mind. He who wants to keep his garden tidy does not reserve a plot for weeds — Dag Hammarskjold
You are merely the lens in the beam. You can only receive, give, and possess the light as the lens does. If you seek yourself, you rob the lens of its transparency. You will know life and be acknowledged by it according to your degree of transparency - your capacity, that is, to vanish as an end and remain purely as a means. — 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
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
The more faithfully you listen to the voices within you, the better you will hear what is sounding outside. — Dag Hammarskjold
When the morning's freshness has been replaced by the weariness of midday, when the leg muscles give under the strain, the climb seems endless, and suddenly nothing will go quite as you wish-it is then that you must not hesitate. — Dag Hammarskjold
Here man is no longer the center of the world, only a witness, but a witness who is also a partner in the silent life of Nature, bound by secret affinities of the trees. — 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
Fatigue dulls the pain, but awakes enticing thoughts of death. So! that is the way in which you are tempted to overcome your loneliness -- by making the ultimate escape from life. -- No! It may be that death is to be your ultimate gift to life: it must not be an act of treachery against it. — Dag Hammarskjold
Time always seems long to the child who is waiting - for Christmas, for next summer, for becoming a grownup: long also when he surrenders his whole soul to each moment of a happy day. — 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
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
The concept of loyalty is distorted when it is understood to mean blind acceptance. It is correctly interpreted when it is assumed to cover honest criticism. — 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
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
It was when Lucifer first congratulated himself upon his angelic behavior that he became the tool of evil. — Dag Hammarskjold
The longest journey is the journey inward. — Dag Hammarskjold
Unless there is a spiritual renaissance, the world will know no peace. — Dag Hammarskjold
We all have within us a center of stillness surrounded by silence. — 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
Be grateful as your deeds become less and less associated with your name, as your feet ever more lightly tread the earth. — 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
The Assembly has witnessed over the last weeks how historical truth is established; once an allegation has been repeated a few times, it is no longer an allegation, it is an established fact, even if no evidence has been brought out in order to support it. — Dag Hammarskjold
Only he deserves power who every day justifies it. — Dag Hammarskjold
Creative people have to be fed from the divine source. — Dag Hammarskjold
I have only my own burden to bear. — Dag Hammarskjold
Your body must become familiar with its death - in all its possible forms and degrees - as a self-evident, imminent, and emotionally neutral step on the way towards the goal you have found worthy of your life. — Dag Hammarskjold
In the presence of God, nothing stands between Him and us - we are forgiven. But we cannot feel His presence if anything is allowed to stand between ourselves and others. — Dag Hammarskjold
Time goes by, reputation increases, ability declines. — Dag Hammarskjold
I never discuss discussions. — Dag Hammarskjold
The world cannot live at peace without the United Nations. For this reason: it creates a reasonable guarantee that all this change in the world, these tremendous political and economic developments, can be channelized, kept orderly. The United Nations is a mold that keeps the hot metal from spilling over. — Dag Hammarskjold
To reach perfection, we must all pass, one by one, through the death of self-effacement. — Dag Hammarskjold
Set-backs in efforts to implement an ideal do not prove that the ideal is wrong... — Dag Hammarskjold
The Universal Declaration... as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations...it not only crystallizes the political thought of our times on these matters, but it has also influenced the thinking of legislators all over the world. — 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
Those who invoke history will certainly be heard by history. And they will have to accept its verdict. — Dag Hammarskjold
Humility is just as much the opposite of self-abasement as it is of self-exaltation. — Dag Hammarskjold
Life only demands from you the strength you possess. Only one feat is possible - not to have run away. — Dag Hammarskjold
The big, shoe-thumping fellow continues as a dark thunderhead to threaten all unrepentant non-Communists with hail and thunder. — Dag Hammarskjold
Tomorrow we shall meet, Death and I -.And he shall thrust his swordInto one who is wide awake. — Dag Hammarskjold
The devils enter uninvited when the house stands empty. For other kinds of guests, you have to first open the door. — 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 life puts to us. — Dag Hammarskjold
"Freedom from fear" could be said to sum up the whole philosophy of human rights. — Dag Hammarskjold
Doffing the ego's
safe glory, he finds
his naked reality. — Dag Hammarskjold
Each morning we must hold out the chalice of our being to receive, to carry, and give back. It must be held out empty - for the past must only be reflected in its polish, its shape, its capacity. — 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
Trees quiver in the wind,
sailing on a sea of mist
out of earshot. — 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
You wake from dreams of doom and--for a moment--you know: beyond all the noise and the gestures, the only real thing, love's calm unwavering flame in the half-light of an early dawn. — Dag Hammarskjold
Beneath the hush a whisper from long ago, promising peace of mind and a burden shared.
No peace which is not peace for all, no rest until all has been fulfilled. — Dag Hammarskjold
My home drove me
into the wilderness.
Few look for me. Few hear me. — Dag Hammarskjold
Smiling, sincere, incorruptible -
His body disciplined and limber.
A man who had become what he could,
And was what he was-
Ready at any moment to gather everything
Into one simple sacrifice. — Dag Hammarskjold
What you must dare: is to be yourself. — Dag Hammarskjold
When you have reached the point where you no longer expect a response, you will at last be able to give in such a way that the other is able to receive, and be grateful. When Love has matured and, through a dissolution of the self into light, become a radiance, then shall the Lover be liberated from dependence upon the Beloved, and the Beloved also be made perfect by being liberated from the Lover. — Dag Hammarskjold
Each day the first day:
Each day a life. — Dag Hammarskjold
Never let success hide its emptiness from you, achievement its nothingness, toil its desolation. And so...keep alive the incentive to push on further, that pain in the soul which drives us beyond ourselves...Do not look back. And do not dream about the future, either. It will neither give you back the past, nor satisfy your other daydreams. Your duty, your reward - your destiny - are here and now. — Dag Hammarskjold
At every moment you choose yourself. But do you choose *your* self? Body and soul contain a thousand possibilities out of which you can build many I's. But in one of them is there a congruence of the elector and the elected. Only one--which you will never find until you have excluded all those superficial and fleeting possibilities of being and doing with which you toy, out of curiosity or wonder or greed, and which hinder you from casting anchor in the experience of the mystery of life, and the consciousness of the talent entrusted to you which is your *I*. — Dag Hammarskjold
The dizziness in the face of les espaces infinis--only overcome if we dare to gaze into them without any protection. And accept them as the reality before which we must justify our existence. For this is the truth we must reach to live, that everything is and we just in it. — Dag Hammarskjold
It is more important to understand the ground of your own behavior than to understand the motives of another. — Dag Hammarskjold
The light died in the low clouds. Falling snow drank in the dusk. Shrouded in silence, the branches wrapped me in their peace. When the boundaries were erased, once again the wonder: that *I* exist. — Dag Hammarskjold
In a dream I walked with God through the deep places of creation; past walls that receded and gates that opened through hall after hall of silence, darkness and refreshment--the dwelling place of souls acquainted with light and warmth--until, around me, was an infinity into which we all flowed together and lived anew, like the rings made by raindrops falling upon wide expanses of calm dark waters. — 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
Isn't the fulfillment of our duty towards our neighbor an expression of deepest desire? — Dag Hammarskjold
Forgiveness breaks the chain of causality because he who 'forgives' you--out of love--takes upon himself the consequences of what you have done. Forgiveness, therefore, always entails a sacrifice.
The price you must pay for your own liberation through another's sacrifice is that you in turn must be willing to liberate in the same way, irrespective of the consequences to yourself. — Dag Hammarskjold
His moral lecture
blazed with hate.
What could have driven a child that far? — Dag Hammarskjold
Apes. The moon woke them--
round the world's navel revolved
prayer wheels of steps. — Dag Hammarskjold
Acts of violence-- Whether on a large or a small scale, the bitter paradox: the meaningfulness of death--and the meaninglessness of killing. — Dag Hammarskjold
The life of simplicity is simple, but it opens to us a book in which we never get beyond the first syllable. — 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
It is not we who seek the Way, but the Way which seeks us. That is why you are faithful to it, even while you stand waiting, so long as you are prepared, and act the moment you are confronted by its demands. — Dag Hammarskjold
He broke fresh ground-because, and only because, he had the courage to go ahead without asking whether others were following or even understood. He had no need for the divided responsibility in which others seek to be safe from ridicule, because he had been granted a faith which required no confirmation-a contact with reality, light and intense like the touch of a loved hand: a union in self-surrender without self- destruction, where his heart was lucid and his mind was loving. — Dag Hammarskjold
I don't know Who -- or what -- put the question, I don't know when it was put. I don't even remember answering. But at some moment I did answer Yes to Someone --or Something --and from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and that, therefore, my life, in self-surrender, had a goal. — Dag Hammarskjold
The 'great' commitment is so much easier than the ordinary everyday one. — Dag Hammarskjold
It is not the Soviet Union or indeed any other big Powers who need the United Nations for their protection. It is all the others. In this sense, the Organization is first of all their Organization and I deeply believe in the wisdom with which they will be able to use it and guide it. I shall remain in my post during the term of my office as a servant of the Organization in the interests of all those other nations, as long as they wish me to do so. — Dag Hammarskjold
Never for the sake of peace and quiet deny your convictions. — Dag Hammarskjold
Every deed and every relationship is surrounded by an atmosphere of silence. Friendship needs no words -- it is solitude delivered from the anguish of loneliness. — Dag Hammarskjold
A heart pulsating in harmony with the circulation of sap and the flow of rivers? A body with the rhythms of the earth in its movements? No. Instead: a mind, shut off from the oxygen of alert senses, that has wasted itself on 'treasons, stratagems and spoils'--of importance only within four walls. A tame animal--in whom the strength of the species has outspent itself, to no purpose. — Dag Hammarskjold
Praise those of your critics for whom nothing is up to standard. — Dag Hammarskjold
He who wants to keep his garden tidy doesn't reserve a plot for weeds. — Dag Hammarskjold
The UN is not just a product of do-gooders. It is harshly real. The day will come when men will see the U.N. and what it means clearly. 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
No cracking of the whip of words
disturbed his peace
in a space that sung. — 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
Better than other people.' Sometimes he says: 'That, at least, you are.' But more often: 'Why should you be? Either you are what you can be, or you are not - like other people. — Dag Hammarskjold
For the sacrificed, in the hour of sacrifice, only one thing counts: faith-alone among enemies and skeptics. Faith, in spite of the humiliation which is both the necessary precondition and the consequence of faith, faith without any hope of compensation other than he can find in a faith which reality seems so thoroughly to refute. — Dag Hammarskjold
To have humility is to experience reality, not in relation to ourselves, but in its sacred independence. It is to see, judge, and act from the point of rest in ourselves. Then, how much disappears, and all that remains falls into place.
In the point of rest at the center of our being, we encounter a world where all things are at rest in the same way. Then a tree becomes a mystery, a cloud a revelation, each man a cosmos of whose riches we can only catch glimpses. The life of simplicity is simple, but it opens to us a book in which we never get beyond the first syllable. — Dag Hammarskjold
Life Lessons by Dag Hammarskjold
Dag Hammarskjold taught us to remain humble and to be open to learning from others, no matter their background or status. He also showed us that it is possible to achieve great things through dedication and hard work.
He demonstrated that we can make a difference in the world by being a strong advocate for peace and justice, and by striving to create a better future for all.
Lastly, he showed us that it is important to stay true to our values, even in the face of adversity and opposition.
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