Daily Inspiration Quote by Dag Hammarskjold

Power, in Hammarskjold's framing, is not a trophy you win and keep; it's a loan that comes due every morning. The line has the clean severity of a man who lived inside institutions and still distrusted their self-importance. "Deserves" is the moral tripwire here: authority isn't validated by procedure alone, and legitimacy isn't a one-time election-night receipt. It must be renewed through conduct.

The subtext is a warning aimed at two targets. First, at leaders who treat office as proof of virtue: the quote strips them of that comfort. Second, at the rest of us who outsource accountability to constitutions, titles, and "mandates": Hammarskjold implies that power's true audit is daily and behavioral, not occasional and ceremonial. "Justifies" does heavy lifting. It isn't "possesses" or "uses effectively". It's a demand for reasons that withstand scrutiny - ethical, practical, human.

Context matters: Hammarskjold was UN Secretary-General during the Suez Crisis and the Congo crisis, navigating decolonization, superpower brinkmanship, and the UN's fragile credibility. He advanced a vision of international civil service as principled independence, not obedient bureaucracy. Read that way, the quote becomes a job description for governance in a world where authority is always contested: if power can't keep proving itself through restraint, transparency, and service, it turns into mere force. The sentence is austere because the stakes were.