Dag Hammarskjöld Quotes

53 Sourced Quotes

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
Time goes by, reputation increases, ability declines.

Dag Hammarskjöld
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 Hammarskjöld
The UN is not just a product of do-gooders. It is harshly real. The day will come when men will see the UN 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 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
Constant attention by a good nurse may be just as important as a major operation by a surgeon.

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

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

Dag Hammarskjöld
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.

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

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

Dag Hammarskjöld
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.

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

Dag Hammarskjöld
You try to save a drowning man without prior authorization.

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
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.

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
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.

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

Dag Hammarskjöld
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.

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
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.

Dag Hammarskjöld
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 Hammarskjöld