Dag Hammarskjöld

Who was Dag Hammarskjöld?

Dag Hjalmar Agne Carl Hammarskjöld 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. He is one of just three people to be awarded a posthumous Nobel Prize. Hammarskjöld is the only U.N. Secretary-General to die in office; his death occurred en route to cease-fire negotiations. American President John F. Kennedy called Hammarskjöld "the greatest statesman of our century".

Famous Quotes:

• 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.
• Never look down to test the ground before taking your next step; only those who keep their eye fixed on the far horizon will find their right road.
• Never measure the height of a mountain, until you have reached the top. Then you will see how low it was.
• It is more noble to give yourself completely to one individual than to labor diligently for the salvation of the masses.
• Pray that your loneliness may spur you into finding something to live for, great enough to die for.
• 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.
• If even dying is to be made a social function, then, grant me the favor of sneaking out on tiptoe without disturbing the party.
• Praise those of your critics for whom nothing is up to standard.
• 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.
• In our era, the road to holiness necessarily passes through the world of action.