A biography for Dag Hammarskjoldhasn’t been written yet.
“It is playing safe that we create a world of utmost insecurity.”
“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.”
“Do not seek death. Death will find you. But seek the road which makes death a fulfillment.”
“What makes loneliness an anguish is not that I have no one to share my burden, but this: I have only my own burden to bear.”
“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.”
“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 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 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.”
“It is more noble to give yourself completely to one individual than to labor diligently for the salvation of the masses.”
“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.”
“'Freedom from fear' could be said to sum up the whole philosophy of human rights.”
“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?”
“I believe that we should die with decency so that at least decency will survive.”
“Those who invoke history will certainly be heard by history. And they will have to accept its verdict.”
“The more we do, the more we can do; the more busy we are, the more leisure we have.”
“It is when we all play safe that we create a world of utmost insecurity.”
“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.”
“Praise those of your critics for whom nothing is up to standard.”
“If even dying is to be made a social function, then, grant me the favor of sneaking out on tiptoe without disturbing the party.”