Dag Hammarskjöld was a Swedish economist and diplomat.Hammarskjöld and his successor U Thant are regarded as the best of all the secretaries-general of the United Nations. His selection has been praised as one of the most significant accomplishments for the organization.Hammarskjöld was the only posthumous recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize and is still widely regarded as a skilled diplomat and administrator for his work in resolving numerous international crises.Famous Dag Hammarskjöld QuotationsFind out some famous Dag Hammarskjold Quotations right here. Get more perspectives on the long path of life with these quotes.“Our work for peace must begin within the private world of each one of us."- December 22, 1953, UN Press Release SG/360.“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.”- December 22, 1953, UN Press Release SG/360.“A man of firm convictions does not ask, and does not receive, understanding from those with whom he comes into conflict. … A mature man is his own judge. In the end, his only firm support is being faithful to his own convictions. The advice of others may be welcome and valuable, but it does not free him from responsibility. Therefore, he may become very lonely.”- December 20, 1954, Address to the Swedish Academy.“The UN is not just a product of do-gooders. It is harshly real.“- June 27, 1955, The Times [London].“To build for man a world without fear, we must be without fear. To build a world of justice, we must be just.”- December 22, 1953, UN Press Release SG/360.“Constant attention by a good nurse may be just as important as a major operation by a surgeon.”- ‘Simpson’s Contemporary Quotations’ (1988), James Beasley Simpson.“Your cravings as a human animal do not become a prayer just because it is God whom you ask to attend to them.”“I never discuss discussions.”- September 19, 1956, Look.“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.”Inspiring Dag Hammarskjold QuotationsHere are some inspiring Dag Hammarskjold Quotations on a major operation. Dag Hammarskjold Quotations in the form of journal entries are a divine source.“It is easy to be nice, even to an enemy — from lack of character.”- Markings (1964) Journal entries by Hammarskjöld, published in 1964.“You are not the oil, you are not the air — merely the point of combustion, the flash-point where the light is born. 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.”- Markings (1964) Journal entries by Hammarskjöld, published in 1964.“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.”- Markings (1964) Journal entries by Hammarskjöld, published in 1964.“Your cravings as a human animal do not become a prayer just because it is God whom you ask to attend to them.”- Markings (1964) Journal entries by Hammarskjöld, published in 1964.“What makes loneliness an anguish , Is not that I have no one to share my burden have only my own burden to bear.”- Markings (1964) Journal entries by Hammarskjöld, published in 1964.“To love life and men as God loves them —For the sake ofTheir infinite possibilities,To wait like Him,To judge like Him,Without passing judgment,To obey the order when it is givenAnd never look back.”- Markings (1964) Journal entries by Hammarskjöld, published in 1964.“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.”- Markings (1964) Journal entries by Hammarskjöld, published in 1964.“The only kind of dignity which is genuine is that which is not diminished by the indifference of others.”- Markings (1964) Journal entries by Hammarskjöld, published in 1964.“There is a point at which everything becomes simple and there is no longer any question of choice, because all you have staked will be lost if you look back. Life’s point of no return.”- Markings (1964) Journal entries by Hammarskjöld, published in 1964.“Time goes by, reputation increases, ability declines.”- Markings (1964) Journal entries by Hammarskjöld, published in 1964.“The longest journeyIs the journey inwards.Of him who has chosen his destiny,Who has started upon his questFor the source of his being.”- Markings (1964) Journal entries by Hammarskjöld, published in 1964.“Pray that your loneliness may spur you into finding something to live for, great enough to die for.”- Markings (1964) Journal entries by Hammarskjöld, published in 1964.Thought-Provoking Dag Hammarskjold QuotationsThese thought-provoking Dag Hammarskjold quotations make loneliness go away. Provoke the right thoughts with these Dag Hammarskjold quotations.“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."“Respect for the word is the first commandment in the discipline by which a man can be educated to maturity — intellectual, emotional, and moral.”- Markings (1964) Journal entries by Hammarskjöld, published in 1964.“Respect for the word — to employ it with scrupulous care and in incorruptible heartfelt love of truth — is essential if there is to be any growth in a society or in the human race.”- Markings (1964) Journal entries by Hammarskjöld, published in 1964.“We are not permitted to choose the frame of our destiny. But what we put into it is ours.”- Markings (1964) Journal entries by Hammarskjöld, published in 1964.“Never measure the height of a mountain until you have reached the top. Then you will see how low it was.”Markings (1964) Journal entries by Hammarskjöld, published in 1964.“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”- Markings (1964) Journal entries by Hammarskjöld, published in 1964.“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.”- Markings (1964) Journal entries by Hammarskjöld, published in 1964.“Never, “for the sake of peace and quiet,” deny your own experience or convictions.”- Markings (1964) Journal entries by Hammarskjöld, published in 1964.“Like the bee, we distill poison from honey for our self-defense–what happens to the bee if it uses its sting is well known.”- Markings (1964) Journal entries by Hammarskjöld, published in 1964.“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 his right road.”- Markings (1964) Journal entries by Hammarskjöld, published in 1964.“Doffing the ego’ssafe glory, he findshis naked reality.”- Markings (1964) Journal entries by Hammarskjöld, published in 1964.Motivational Dag Hammarskjold QuotationsFind out some motivational quotations by Dag Hammarskjold for creative people. Learn about faith and forgiveness through these quotes.“Forgiveness breaks the chain of causality because he who ‘forgives’ you–out of love–takes upon himself the consequences of what you have done."“In our era, the road to holiness necessarily passes through the world of action.”- Markings (1964) Journal entries by Hammarskjöld, published in 1964.“In the faith which is “God’s marriage to the soul”, you are one in God, and God is wholly in you, just as, for you, He is wholly in all you meet. With this faith, in prayer you descend into yourself to meet the other.”- Markings (1964) Journal entries by Hammarskjöld, published in 1964.“In the last analysis it is our conception of death which decides our answers to all the questions life puts to us … Hence too the necessity of preparing for it.”- Markings (1964) Journal entries by Hammarskjöld, published in 1964.“Life only demands from you the strength you possess. Only one feat is possible — not to have run away.”- Markings (1964) Journal entries by Hammarskjöld, published in 1964“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.”- Markings (1964) Journal entries by Hammarskjöld, published in 1964.“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 again made clean.”- Markings (1964) Journal entries by Hammarskjöld, published in 1964.“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.”- Markings (1964) Journal entries by Hammarskjöld, published in 1964.“He who has surrendered himself to it knows that the Way ends on the Cross — even when it is leading him through the jubilation of Gennesaret or the triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Do not seek death. Death will find you. But seek the road which makes death a fulfillment.”- Markings (1964) Journal entries by Hammarskjöld, published in 1964.“I believe that we should die with decency so that at least decency will survive.”- Markings (1964) Journal entries by Hammarskjöld, published in 1964.“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.”- Markings (1964) Journal entries by Hammarskjöld, published in 1964.“Give me a pure heart that I may see Thee.A humble heart that I may hear Thee,A heart of love that I may serve Thee,A heart of faith that I may abide in Thee.”- Markings (1964) Journal entries by Hammarskjöld, published in 1964.“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.”- Markings (1964) Journal entries by Hammarskjöld, published in 1964.“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.”- Markings (1964) Journal entries by Hammarskjöld, published in 1964.“Friendship needs no words — it is solitude delivered from the anguish of loneliness.”- Markings (1964) Journal entries by Hammarskjöld, published in 1964.“Variant translation: Friendship needs no words — it is a loneliness relieved of the anguish of loneliness.”- Markings (1964) Journal entries by Hammarskjöld, published in 1964.“In a political context of the utmost significance, [“freedom from fear”] recognizes a human right which, in a broad sense, may be said to sum up the whole philosophy of human rights.”- Speech at the celebration of the 180th anniversary of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, May 16, 1956.“Do we refer to the purposes of the Charter? They are expressions of universally shared ideals which cannot fail us, though we, alas, often fail them. Or do we think of the institutions of the United Nations? They are our tools. We fashioned them. We use them. It is our responsibility to remedy any flaws there may be in them…. This is a difficult lesson for both idealists and realists, though for different reasons. I suppose that, just as the first temptation of the realist is the illusion of cynicism, so the first temptation of the idealist is the illusion of Utopia.”- An International Administrative Service, from an Address to the International Law Association at McGill University, Montreal, May 30, 1956. Wilder Foote (Ed.), The Servant of Peace, A Selection of the Speeches and Statements of Dag Hammarskjöld, The Bodley Head, London 1962, p. 116.“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.”- Statement to the General Assembly of the United Nations, October 3, 1960.“You try to save a drowning man without prior authorization.”- Statement on UN Operations in Congo before the General Assembly, October 17, 1960.“Those who invoke history will certainly be heard by history. And they will have to accept its verdict.”- On Nikita Khrushchev as quoted in The Times [London], October 4, 1960.“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.”- On accusations by Nikita Khrushchev, as quoted in The Times [London], October 4, 1960.“Setting in trying to realize the ideal do not prove that the ideal is at fault.”- As quoted by Rolf Edberg, Swedish Ambassador to Norway, accepting the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of Hammarskjöld in Oslo, Norway, December 10, 1961.“Acts of violence– Whether on a large or a small scale, the bitter paradox: the meaningfulness of death–and the meaninglessness of killing.”― Dag Hammarskjöld, Markings“When the sense of the earth unites with the sense of one’s body, one becomes earth of the earth, a plant among plants, an animal born from the soil and fertilizing it. In this union, the body is confirmed in its pantheism.”― Markings“It is when we all play safe that we create a world of utmost insecurity. It is when we all play safe that fatality will lead us to our doom. It is in the “dark shade of courage” alone that the spell can be broken.”- Servant of Peace: A Selection of the Speeches and Statements of Dag Hammarskjöld, Secretary General of the United Nations (1962), p. 107.“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?”- Statement inspired by the work of British sculptor Barbara Hepworth, quoted in The Christian Science Monitor, June 18, 1964.“It is a little bit humiliating when I have to say that Chou En-lai to me appears as the most superior brain I have so far met in the field of foreign politics… so much more dangerous than you imagine because he is so much better a man than you have ever admitted.”- In a letter to a friend, as quoted in Hammarskjöld (1972) by Brian Urquhart.“The big, shoe-thumping fellow continues as a dark thunderhead to threaten all unrepentant non-Communists with hail and thunder.”- On Nikita Kruschev, in a letter to a friend, as quoted in Hammarskjöld (1972) by Brian Urquhart.“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.”-As quoted in ‘Know Your Limits — Then Ignore Them’ (2000) by John Mason.“If even dying is to be made a social function, then, grant me the favor of sneaking out on tiptoe without disturbing the party.”- As quoted in ‘As I Journey On: Meditations for Those Facing Death’ (2000) by Sharon Dardis and Cindy Rogers.“It is more noble to give yourself completely to one individual than to labor diligently for the salvation of the masses.”- As quoted in ‘Living in Grace: The Shift to Spiritual Perception’ (2002) by Beca Lewis, p. 158.“The more faithfully you listen to the voices within you, the better you will hear what is sounding outside.”- As quoted in ‘Sacred Seasonings’ (2003) by Sherri Purdom.
Dag Hammarskjöld was a Swedish economist and diplomat.
