Academics From Sweden

"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."

"A man of firm convictions does not ask, and does not receive, understanding from those with whom he comes into conflict. ... A mature man is his own judge. In the end, his only firm support is being faithful to his own convictions. The advice of others may be welcome and valuable, but it does not free him from responsibility. Therefore, he may become very lonely."

"It has been said that the United Nations was not created in order to bring us to heaven, but in order to save us from hell."

"Our work for peace must begin within the private world of each one of us. To build for man a world without fear, we must be without fear. To build a world of justice, we must be just. And how can we fight for liberty if we are not free in our own minds? How can we ask others to sacrifice if we are not ready to do so? ... Only in true surrender to the interest of all can we reach that strength and independence, that unity of purpose, that equity of judgment which are necessary if we are to measure up to our duty to the future, as men of a generation to whom the chance was given to build in time a world of peace."

"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 was in the cause of his activities in the interest of peace that the late Dag Hammarskjöld lost his life. Of his work a great deal has been written, but I wish to take this opportunity to say how much I regret that he is not with us to receive the encouragement of this service he has rendered mankind. ... How many times his decisions helped to avert a world catastrophe will never be known. But there are many of such occasions, I am sure. But there can be no doubt that he steered the United Nations through one of the most difficult phases in its history. His absence from our midst today should be an enduring lesson for all peace-lovers, and a challenge to the nations of the world to eliminate those conditions in Africa, nay, anywhere, which brought about the tragic and untimely end to his life. This, the devoted Chief Executive of the world."

"I realise now that in comparison to him, I am a small man. He was the greatest statesman of our century."

"We meet in an hour of grief and challenge. Dag Hammarskjold is dead. But the United Nations lives. His tragedy is deep in our hearts, but the task for which he died is at the top of our agenda. A noble servant of peace is gone. But the quest for peace lies before us. The problem is not the death of one man — the problem is the life of this organization. It will either grow to meet the challenges of our age, or it will be gone with the wind, without influence, without force, without respect. Were we to let it die, to enfeeble its vigor, to cripple its powers, we would condemn our future. For in the development of this organization rests the only true alternative to war — and war appeals no longer as a rational alternative. Unconditional war can no longer lead to unconditional victory. It can no longer serve to settle disputes. It can no longer concern the great powers alone. For a nuclear disaster, spread by wind and water and fear, could well engulf the great and the small, the rich and the poor, the committed and the uncommitted alike. Mankind must put an end to war — or war will put an end to mankind. So let us here resolve that Dag Hammarskjold did not live, or die, in vain. Let us call a truce to terror. Let us invoke the blessings of peace. And as we build an international capacity to keep peace, let us join in dismantling the national capacity to wage war."

"He has a physical stamina unique in the world, a man who night after night has gone with one or two hours of sleep and worked all day intelligently and devotedly."

"He would remind us how man once organized himself in families, how families joined together in tribes and villages, and how tribes and villages developed into peoples and nations. But the nation could not be the end of such development. In the Charter of the United Nations he saw a guide to what he called an organized international community.With an intensity that grew stronger each year, he stressed in his annual reports to the General Assembly that the United Nations had to be shaped into a dynamic instrument in the service of development. In his last report, in a tone of voice penetrating because of its very restraint, he confronted those member states which were clinging to "the time-honored philosophy of sovereign national states in armed competition, of which the most that may be expected is that they achieve a peaceful coexistence". This philosophy did not meet the needs of a world of ever increasing interdependence, where nations have at their disposal armaments of hitherto unknown destructive strength. The United Nations must open up ways to more developed forms of international cooperation."

"Forty years ago today, the [Nobel Peace] Prize for 1961 was awarded for the first time to a Secretary-General of the United Nations — posthumously, because Dag Hammarskjöld had already given his life for peace in Central Africa."

"It will not surprise you to hear that Dag Hammarskjöld is a figure of great importance for me — as he must be for any Secretary-General. His life and his death, his words and his action, have done more to shape public expectations of the office, and indeed of the Organisation, than those of any other man or woman in its history.His wisdom and his modesty, his unimpeachable integrity and single-minded devotion to duty, have set a standard for all servants of the international community — and especially, of course for his successors — which is simply impossible to live up to. There can be no better rule of thumb for a Secretary-General, as he approaches each new challenge or crisis, than to ask himself, “how would Hammarskjöld have handled this?”"

"The more we do, the more we can do; the more busy we are, the more leisure we have."

"Creative people have to be fed from the divine source."

"The more faithfully you listen to the voices within you, the better you will hear what is sounding outside."

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

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

"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."

"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."

"Forgiveness breaks the chain of causality because he who 'forgives' you — out of love — takes upon himself the consequences of what you have done. Forgiveness, therefore, always entails a sacrifice."

"Humility is just as much the opposite of self-abasement as it is of self exaltation. To be humble is not to make comparisons."

"In the faith which is "God's marriage to the soul", you are one in God, and God is wholly in you, just as, for you, He is wholly in all you meet. With this faith, in prayer you descend into yourself to meet the Other."

"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."

"In the last analysis it is our conception of death which decides our answers to all the questions life puts to us … Hence too the necessity of preparing for it."

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

""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."

"You are not the oil, you are not the air — merely the point of combustion, the flash-point where the light is born. You are merely the lens in the beam. You can only receive, give, and possess the light as the lens does. If you seek yourself, you rob the lens of its transparency. You will know life and be acknowledged by it according to your degree of transparency — your capacity, that is, to vanish as an end and remain purely as a means."

"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."

"Destiny is something not be to desired and not to be avoided...it is a mystery not contrary to reason, for it implies that the world, and the course of human history, have meaning."

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

"To love life and men as God loves them — for the sake of their infinite possibilities, to wait like Him, to judge like Him, without passing judgment, to obey the order when it is given and never look back — Then He can use you — then, perhaps, He will use you."

"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 again made clean."

"In our era, the road to holiness necessarily passes through the world of action."

"Le courage de nos différences. Without becoming irresponsible, to accept what divides us — with humility and with pride. It is by the 'new' that mankind is saved or betrayed."

"Respect for the word is the first commandment in the discipline by which a man can be educated to maturity — intellectual, emotional, and moral. Respect for the word — to employ it with scrupulous care and in incorruptible heartfelt love of truth — is essential if there is to be any growth in a society or in the human race. To misuse the word is to show contempt for man. It undermines the bridges and poisons the wells. It causes Man to regress down the long path of his evolution. "But I say unto you, that every idle word that men speak...""

"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."

"The only kind of dignity which is genuine is that which is not diminished by the indifference of others."

"Godhet är något så enkelt: att alltid finnas för andra, att aldrig söka sig själv."

"Give me a pure heart — that I may see Thee. A humble heart — that I may hear Thee, A heart of love — that I may serve Thee, A heart of faith — that I may abide in Thee."

"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."

"He who has surrendered himself to it knows that the Way ends on the Cross — even when it is leading him through the jubilation of Gennesaret or the triumphal entry into Jerusalem."

"Att vara fri, att kunna stå upp och lämna allt — utan att se sig tillbaka. Att säga ja —"

"For all that has been — Thanks! To all that shall be — Yes!"

"It is easy to be nice, even to an enemy — from lack of character."

"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."

"Jag kämpar för det omöjliga: att mitt liv skall få en mening. Jag vågar inte, vet inte hur jag skulle kunna tro: att jag inte är ensam."

"Bed att din ensamhet blir sporren att finna något att leva för, stort nog att dö för."

"Never, "for the sake of peace and quiet," deny your own experience or convictions."

"There is a point at which everything becomes simple and there is no longer any question of choice, because all you have staked will be lost if you look back. Life's point of no return."

"Är livet fattigt? Är icke snarare din hand för smal, dina ögonlinser grumlade? Det är du som måste växa."