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.
Dag Hammarskjold

Constant attention by a good nurse may be just as important as a major operation by a surgeon.
Dag Hammarskjold

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.
Dag Hammarskjold

Do not seek death. Death will find you. But seek the road which makes death a fulfillment.
Dag Hammarskjold

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.
Dag Hammarskjold

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.
Dag Hammarskjold

"Freedom from fear" could be said to sum up the whole philosophy of human rights.
Dag Hammarskjold

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

God does not die on the day when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason.
Dag Hammarskjold

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

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

I never discuss discussions.
Dag Hammarskjold

If even dying is to be made a social function, then, grant me the favor of sneaking out on tiptoe without disturbing the party.
Dag Hammarskjold

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

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

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.
Dag Hammarskjold

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

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

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

It is when we all play safe that we create a world of utmost insecurity.
Dag Hammarskjold