Dag Hammarskjöld (1905–61,) fully Dag Hjalmar Agne Carl Hammarskjöld, was a Swedish economist and diplomat. In his role as the United Nations Secretary-General 1953–61, he reformed the U.N. Secretariat and applied the full range of the powers of the office.
Born in Jönköping, Dag Hammarskjöld was the son of Hjalmar Hammarskjöld, who served as prime minister of Sweden and long-time chair of the Nobel Prize Foundation. Dag Hammarskjöld studied law and economics at Uppsala and Stockholm and taught political economy at Stockholm 1933–36. He then joined the Swedish civil service, worked in the ministry of finance, became president of the board of the Bank of Sweden, and later served in the ministry of foreign affairs.
In 1951, Hammarskjöld became a leader of Sweden’s delegation to the U.N. General Assembly. After Norway’s Trygve Lie resigned as first United Nations Secretary-General, Hammarskjöld was elected to the office for a term of five years. In September 1957, he was re-elected to another five-year term.
Hammarskjöld played a leading role in expanding the operations of the U.N., most notably for his leading role in setting up the U.N. Emergency Force in Sinai and Gaza in 1956, and his efforts for conciliation in the Middle East 1957–58. He also steered the technical and economic assistance to poor and newly independent nations.
Hammarskjöld was killed in a plane crash near Ndola, Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia, while he was occupied in negotiations over the Congo Crisis. A Swedish-led U.N. inquiry concluded that the plane crashed because of “pilot error;” but this did not satisfy many who suspected foul play. He was posthumously awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1961.
Hammarskjöld’s journal, Markings (1964,) revealed his literary and philosophical values and his aspirations to reconcile abstract ideals with human frailty.
Princeton University’s Henry Pitney Van Dusen wrote the acclaimed biography Dag Hammarskjöld (1967.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Dag Hammarskjold
The longest journey of any person is the journey inward.
—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
Topics: Forgiveness
The present moment is significant, not as the bridge between past and future, but by reason of its contents, which can fill our emptiness and become ours, if we are capable of receiving them.
—Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: The Present
Friendship needs no words…
—Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Friends and Friendship
The more faithfully you listen to the voices within you, the better you will hear what is sounding outside.
—Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Confidence, Self-talk
If even dying is to be made a social function, then, grant me the favor of sneaking out on tiptoe without disturbing the party.
—Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Dying, Death
Praise those of your critics for whom nothing is up to standard.
—Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Critics, Criticism
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
Topics: Nation, Nationality, Nationalism
In our era, the road to holiness necessarily passes through the world of action.
—Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Action
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
Topics: Loneliness
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 Hammarskjold
Topics: Goals, Vision, Appropriateness, Aspirations, Challenges, Aptness
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
Topics: Friends and Friendship, Friendship
The end of all political effort must be the well-being of the individual in the life of safety and freedom.
—Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Politics
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
In life so wretched? Isn’t it rather your hands which are too small, your vision which is muddied? You are the one who must grow up.
—Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Forethought, Vision, Self-reliance, Gratitude, Blessings, Foresight, Acceptance, Attitude, Self-Pity, Hedonism
We all have within us a center of stillness surrounded by silence.
—Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Serenity
Respect for the word – to employ it with scrupulous care and an incorruptible heartfelt love of truth – is essential if there is to be any growth in a society or in the human race.To misuse the word is to show contempt for man. It undermines the bridges and poisons the wells. It causes Man to regress down the long path of his evolution.
—Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Words
We cannot afford to forget any experience, not even the most painful.
—Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Memory
Never, “for the sake of peace and quiet,” deny your own experience and convictions.
—Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Peace, Conviction
The great commitment is so much easier than the ordinary, everyday one—and can all too easily shut our hearts to the latter. A willingness to make the ultimate sacrifice can be associated with, and even produce, a great hardness of heart. You thought you were indifferent to praise for achievements which you would not yourself have counted to your credit, or that, if you should be tempted to feel flattered, you would always remember that the praise far exceeded what the events justified. You thought yourself indifferent—until you felt your jealousy flare up at his naive attempts to make himself important, and your self-conceit stood exposed. Concerning the hardness of the heart—and its littleness—let me read with open eyes the book my days are writing, and learn.
—Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Praise
It is more noble to give yourself completely to one individual than to labor diligently for the salvation of the masses.
—Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Praise
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
Topics: Spirituality, Respectability, Respect
So rests the sky against the earth. The dark still tarn in the lap of the forest. As a husband embraces his wife’s body in faithful tenderness, so the bare ground and trees are embraced by this still, high, light of the morning. I feel an ache of longing to share in this embrace, to be united and absorbed. A longing like carnal desire, but directed towards earth, water, sky, and returned by the whispers of the trees, the fragrance of the soil, the caresses of the wind, the embrace of water and light. Content? No, no, no—but refreshed, rested—while waiting.
—Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Wilderness
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
Topics: Maturity
Perhaps a great love is never returned.
—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
Topics: Procrastination
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
Topics: Solitude
Pray that your loneliness may spur you into finding something to live for, great enough to die for.
—Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Purpose, Loneliness
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
Topics: Integrity
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
Topics: War
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