Dag Hammarskjold
Dag Hammarskjold
Dag Hjalmar Agne Carl Hammarskjöld; 29 July 1905 – 18 September 1961) was a Swedish diplomat, economist, and author. The second secretary-general of the United Nations, he served from April 1953 until his death in a plane crash in September 1961. At the age of 56 years and 255 days, Hammarskjöld was the youngest to have held the post. He is one of only four people to be awarded a posthumous Nobel Prize. Hammarskjöld is the only UN secretary-general to...
NationalitySwedish
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth29 July 1905
CountrySweden
If even dying is to be made a social function, then, grant me the favor of sneaking out on tiptoe without disturbing the party.
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.
Do not seek death. Death will find you,
Do not seek death. Death will find you. But seek the road which makes death a fulfillment.
In the last analysis, it is our conception of death which decides our answers to all the questions that life puts to us.
The UN is not just a product of do-gooders. It is harshly real. The day will come when men will see the U.N. 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.
Every deed and every relationship is surrounded by an atmosphere of silence. 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.
I don't know Who -- or what -- put the question, I don't know when it was put. I don't even remember answering. But at some moment I did answer Yes to Someone --or Something --and from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and that, therefore, my life, in self-surrender, had a goal.
Life demands from you only the strength you posses. One feat is possible -- not to have run away.
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.
Never for the sake of peace and quiet deny your convictions.
It is when we all play safe that we create a world of utmost insecurity
Better than other people.' Sometimes he says: 'That, at least, you are.' But more often: 'Why should you be? Either you are what you can be, or you are not - like other people.