Dag Hammarskjold's Quotes

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

I never discuss discussions.

Only he deserves power who every day justifies it.

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

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

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

Time goes by, reputation increases, ability declines.

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.

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.

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 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 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.

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.

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.

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

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