Dag Hammarskjöld Quotes

53 Sourced Quotes

Friendship needs no words — it is solitude delivered from the anguish of loneliness.

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

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

Dag Hammarskjöld
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.

Dag Hammarskjöld
Our work for peace must begin within the private world of each one of us. To build for man a world without fear, we must be without fear. To build a world of justice, we must be just. And how can we fight for liberty if we are not free in our own minds? How can we ask others to sacrifice if we are not ready to do so?... Only in true surrender to the interest of all can we reach that strength and independence, that unity of purpose, that equity of judgment which are necessary if we are to measure up to our duty to the future, as men of a generation to whom the chance was given to build in time a world of peace.

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

Dag Hammarskjöld
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 Hammarskjöld
Setbacks in trying to realize the ideal do not prove that the ideal is at fault.

Dag Hammarskjöld
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.

Dag Hammarskjöld
The big, shoe-thumping fellow continues as a dark thunderhead to threaten all unrepentant non-Communists with hail and thunder.

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

Dag Hammarskjöld
What gives life its value you can find — and lose. But never possess. This holds good above all for "the Truth about Life."

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

Dag Hammarskjöld
"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 Hammarskjöld
The only kind of dignity which is genuine is that which is not diminished by the indifference of others.

Dag Hammarskjöld
To love life and men as God loves them —
for the sake of
their infinite possibilities,
to wait like Him,
to judge like Him,
without passing judgment,
to obey the order when it is given
and never look back.

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

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

Dag Hammarskjöld
Those who invoke history will certainly be heard by history. And they will have to accept its verdict.

Dag Hammarskjöld
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.

Dag Hammarskjöld
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.

Dag Hammarskjöld
Time goes by, reputation increases, ability declines.

Dag Hammarskjöld
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 Hammarskjöld