Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Dag Hammarskjold (Swedish Statesman)

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

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

Do not seek death. Death will find you. But seek the road which makes death a fulfillment.
Dag Hammarskjold

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: Respectability, Spirituality, Respect

The only kind of dignity which is genuine is that which is not diminished by the indifference of others.
Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Dignity

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

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

We are not permitted to choose the frame of our destiny. But what we put into it is ours.
Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Destiny, Decisions

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

Never, “for the sake of peace and quiet,” deny your own experience and convictions.
Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Peace, Conviction

Only one feat is possible: not to have run away.
Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Courage

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

Time goes by, reputation increases, ability declines.
Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Reputation

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: Dying, Death

Never measure the height of a mountain, until you have reached the top. Then you will see how low it was.
Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Perseverance, Achievement, Possibilities, Journeys

Life demands from you only the strength you posses. One one feat is possible—not to have run away.
Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Being True to Yourself

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

We all have within us a center of stillness surrounded by silence.
Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Serenity

In the point of rest at the center of our being, we encounter a world where all things are at rest in the same way. Then a tree becomes a mystery, a cloud a revelation, each man a cosmos of whose riches we can only catch glimpses. The life of its simplicity is simple, but it opens to us a book in which we never get beyond the first syllable.
Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Wilderness

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

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: Vision, Goals, Challenges, Aptness, Aspirations, Appropriateness

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

We cannot afford to forget any experience, not even the most painful.
Dag Hammarskjold
Topics: Memory

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

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

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 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

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

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: Dedication, Simplicity, Decisions, Commitment

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

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

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