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.

Never, for the sake of peace and quiet, deny your own experience or convictions.

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

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.

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.

If only I may grow: firmer, simpler, quieter, warmer.

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

Life only demands from you the strength that you possess. Only one feat is possible; not to run away.

The breaking wave and the muscle as it contracts obey the same law. Delicate line gathers the body’s total strength in a bold balance. Shall my soul meet so severe a curve, journeying on its way to form?

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.

It is easy to be nice, even to an enemy – from lack of character.

Time always seems long to the child who is waiting – for Christmas, for next summer, for becoming a grownup: long also when he surrenders his whole soul to each moment of a happy day.

Your position never gives you the right to command. It only imposes on you the duty of so living your life that others can receive your orders without being humiliated.

Time goes by, reputation increases, ability declines.

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.

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

Praise those of your critics for whom nothing is up to standard.

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 made clean again.

In the last analysis, it is our conception of death which decides our answers to all the questions that life puts to us.

“Freedom from fear” could be said to sum up the whole philosophy of human rights.

I never discuss discussions.

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

It is when we all play safe that we create a world of utmost insecurity.

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

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.

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.

Only he deserves power who every day justifies it.

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

I am the vessel. The draft is God’s. And God is the thirsty one.

The more we do, the more we can do; the more busy we are, the more leisure we have.

If even dying is to be made a social function, then, grant me the favor of sneaking out on tiptoe without disturbing the party.

Constant attention by a good nurse may be just as important as a major operation by a surgeon.

Never measure the height of a mountain until you have reached the top. Then you will see how low it was.

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.

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.

God does not die on the day when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason.

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 the right road.

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.

Is life so wretched? Isn’t it rather your hands which are too small, your vision which is muddled? You are the one who must grow up.

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.

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

It is playing safe that we create a world of utmost insecurity.

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.

Your cravings as a human animal do not become a prayer just because it is God whom you ask to attend to them.

Never for the sake of peace and quiet deny your convictions.

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.

Friendship needs no words – it is solitude delivered from the anguish of loneliness.

I believe that we should die with decency so that at least decency will survive.