Hammarskjold, Dag quotes
1905-1961 Swedish Statesman Secretary-general of UNIn the last analysis it is our conception of death which decides our answers to all the questions life puts to us.
Hammarskjold, Dag
Death and Dying
Praise those of your critics for whom nothing is up to standard.
Hammarskjold, Dag
Critics and Criticism
Life only demands from you the strength that you possess. Only one feat is possible; not to run away.
Hammarskjold, Dag
Courage
If even dying is to be made a social function, then, grant me the favor of sneaking out on tiptoe without disturbing the party.
Hammarskjold, Dag
Death and Dying
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.
Hammarskjold, Dag
Conquest
We are not permitted to choose the frame of our destiny. But what we put into it is ours.
Hammarskjold, Dag
Destiny
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.
Hammarskjold, Dag
Death and Dying
Never look down to test the ground before taking your next step; only those who keep their eye fixed on the far horizon will find their right road.
Hammarskjold, Dag
Goals
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.
Hammarskjold, Dag
Friends and Friendship
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.
Hammarskjold, Dag
Fatigue
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.
Hammarskjold, Dag
Forgiveness
Friendship needs no words...
Hammarskjold, Dag
Friends and Friendship
When the morning s freshness has been replaced by the weariness of midday, when the leg muscles give under the strain, the climb seems endless, and suddenly nothing will go quite as you wish-it is then that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.
Hammarskjold, Dag
Procrastination
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.
Hammarskjold, Dag
Maturity
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.
Hammarskjold, Dag
Integrity
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.
Hammarskjold, Dag
Loneliness
Never for the sake of peace and quiet deny your convictions.
Hammarskjold, Dag
Peace
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.
Hammarskjold, Dag
Peace
Your cravings as a human animal do not become a prayer just because it is God whom you ask to attend to them.
Hammarskjold, Dag
Prayer
Never measure the height of a mountain, until you have reached the top. Then you will see how low it was.
Hammarskjold, Dag
Possibilities
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.
Hammarskjold, Dag
Respectability
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.
Hammarskjold, Dag
Purpose
Pray that your loneliness may spur you into finding something to live for, great enough to die for.
Hammarskjold, Dag
Purpose
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.
Hammarskjold, Dag
United Nations
The more faithfully you listen to the voices within you, the better you will hear what is sounding outside.
Hammarskjold, Dag
Self-talk
Time goes by, reputation increases, ability declines.
Hammarskjold, Dag
Reputation
It is playing safe that we create a world of utmost insecurity.
Hammarskjold, Dag
Risk
It is more noble to give yourself completely to one individual than to labor diligently for the salvation of the masses.
Hammarskjold, Dag
Approval
In our era, the road to holiness necessarily passes through the world of action.
Hammarskjold, Dag
Action
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.
Hammarskjold, Dag
Enlightenment