Dag Hammarskjold Quotes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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 for the sake of peace and quiet deny your convictions."

"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."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"Only he deserves power who every day justifies it."

"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."

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

"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."

"Time goes by, reputation increases, ability declines."

"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?"

"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."