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
Your cravings as a human animal do not become a prayer just because it is God whom you ask to attend to them.
—Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Prayer
The more faithfully you listen to the voices within you, the better you will hear what is sounding outside.
—Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Self-talk, Confidence
Tomorrow we shall meet,
Death and I -.
And he shall thrust his sword
Into one who is wide awake.
—Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Death
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
Perhaps a great love is never returned.
—Dag Hammarskjold
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. In this sense, the Organization is first of all their Organization and I deeply believe in the wisdom with which they will be able to use it and guide it. I shall remain in my post during the term of my office as a servant of the Organization in the interests of all those other nations, as long as they wish me to do so.
—Dag Hammarskjold
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: Death, Dying
The only kind of dignity which is genuine is that which is not diminished by the indifference of others.
—Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Dignity
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.
—Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Simplicity, Dedication, Commitment, Decisions
Time goes by, reputation increases, ability declines.
—Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Reputation
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, Aspirations, Challenges, Aptness, Appropriateness
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: Conviction, Peace
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
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 Hammarskjold
Topics: Forgiveness
We are not permitted to choose the frame of our destiny. But what we put into it is ours.
—Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Decisions, Destiny
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
In the last analysis it is our conception of death which decides our answers to all the questions life puts to us.
—Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Death, Dying
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 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.
—Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Purpose
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
Friendship needs no words…
—Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: 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.
—Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Work
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.
—Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Peace
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
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: Nationality, Nationalism, Nation
Life only demands from you the strength you possess. Only one feat is possible—not to have run away.
—Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: God, Forgiveness, Work, Strength, Courage
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
Only one feat is possible: not to have run away.
—Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Courage
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
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