Dag Hammarskjöld Quotes

He stood erect - as a peg-top does as long as the whip keeps lashing it. He was modest - thanks to a robust conviction of his own superiority. He was unambitious - all he wanted was a life free from cares and he took more pleasure in the failures of others than in his own successes. He saved his life by never risking it - and complained that he was misunderstood.

The UN is not just a product of do-gooders. It is harshly real. The day will come when men will see the UN 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.

You wake from dreams of doom and — for a moment — you know: beyond all the noise and the gestures, the only real thing, love's calm unwavering flame in the half-light of an early dawn.

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.

"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.

It is not we who seek the Way, but the Way which seeks us. That is why you are faithful to it, even while you stand waiting, so long as you are prepared, and act the moment you are confronted by its demands.

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. In this context the representative of the Soviet Union spoke of courage. It is very easy to resign; it is not so easy to stay on. It is very easy to bow to the wish of a big power. It is another matter to resist. As is well known to all Members of this Assembly, I have done so before on many occasions and in many directions. If it is the wish of those nations who see in the Organization their best protection in the present world, I shall now do so again.

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

"To be free, to rise and leave everything, without a glance back, behind. To say "yes"."

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

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

The present moment is significant, not as the bridge between past and future, but by reason of its contents — contents which can fill our emptiness and become ours, if we are capable of receiving them.

For all that has been — Thanks. For all that shall be — Yes.

It is not the repeated mistakes, the long succession of petty betrayals — though, God knows, they would give cause enough for anxiety and self-contempt — but the huge elementary mistake, the betrayal of that within me which is greater than I — in complacent adjustment to alien demands.

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.