Dag Hammarskjöld

This week Sue shared a prayer from Dag Hammarskjöld at the Daily Prayer blog. It brought back memories of Junior High social studies.. seems like I had to remember his name for a test. Here are a few facts from the Wiki on Dag:

Dag Hjalmar Agne Carl Hammarskjöld (1905-1961) was a Swedish diplomat, economist and author and was 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 the only person to have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize posthumously. Hammarskjöld remains the only U.N. Secretary-General to die in office. U.S. President John F. Kennedy called Hammarskjöld “the greatest statesman of our century.”

Here are a few things that he once said:

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

Never for the sake of peace and quiet deny your convictions.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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