Quotes By 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.

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.

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

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.

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

I never discuss discussions.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Time goes by, reputation increases, ability declines.

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

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