Jimmy Carter > Quotes

“We should live our lives as though Christ was coming this afternoon.”
― Jimmy Carter

“Like music and art, love of nature is a common language that can transcend political or social boundaries.”
― Jimmy Carter

“Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself; and where they are, they should be changed. Nowhere is this more clear than in the laws against possession of marijuana in private for personal use... Therefore, I support legislation amending Federal law to eliminate all Federal criminal penalties for the possession of up to one ounce [28g] of marijuana.”
― Jimmy Carter

“I have one life and one chance to make it count for something. I’m free to choose that something. That something—the something that I’ve chosen—is my faith. My faith demands that I do whatever I can, wherever I can, whenever I can, for as long as I can with whatever I have, to try to make a difference.”
― Jimmy Carter

“Republicans are men of narrow vision, who are afraid of the future.
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― Jimmy Carter

“War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn to live together in peace by killing each other's children.”
― Jimmy Carter, The Nobel Peace Prize Lecture

“America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense… human rights invented America.”
― Jimmy Carter

“I believe that anyone can be successful in life, regardless of natural talent or the environment within which we live. This is not based on measuring success by human competitiveness for wealth, possessions, influence, and fame, but adhering to God's standards of truth, justice, humility, service, compassion, forgiveness, and love.”
― Jimmy Carter, Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis

“A strong nation, like a strong person, can afford to be gentle, firm, thoughtful, and restrained. It can afford to extend a helping hand to others. It is a weak nation, like a weak person, that must behave with bluster and boasting and rashness and other signs of insecurity.”
― Jimmy Carter

“Earlier in my life I thought the things that mattered were the things that you could see, like your car, your house, your wealth, your property, your office. But as I've grown older I've become convinced that the things that matter most are the things that you can't see -- the love you share with others, your inner purpose, your comfort with who you are.”
― Jimmy Carter

“We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children.”
― Jimmy Carter

“When people are intimidated about having their own opinions, oppression is at hand.”
― Jimmy Carter

“We have become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic. Different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams.”
― Jimmy Carter

“We must adjust to changing times and still hold to unchanging principles.”
― Jimmy Carter

“Failure is a reality; we all fail at times, and it's painful when we do. But it's better to fail while striving for something wonderful, challenging, adventurous, and uncertain than to say, " I don't want to try because I may not succeed completely.”
― Jimmy Carter, Sources of Strength: Meditations on Scripture for a Living Faith

“The bottom line is this: Peace will come to Israel and the Middle East only when the Israeli government is willing to comply with international law, with the Roadmap for Peace, with official American policy, with the wishes of a majority of its own citizens--and honor its own previous commitments--by accepting its legal borders. All Arab neighbors must pledge to honor Israel's right to live in peace under these conditions. The United States is squandering international prestige and goodwill and intensifying global anti-American terrorism by unofficially condoning or abetting the Israeli confiscation and colonization of Palestinian territories.”
― Jimmy Carter, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid

“Put on a sweater.”
― Jimmy Carter

“When our mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters are considered both different and inferior in the eyes of the God we worship, this belief tends to permeate society and everyone suffers.”
― Jimmy Carter, A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power

“God always answers prayers. Sometimes it's "yes." Sometimes the answer is "no." Sometimes it's "you gotta be kidding.”
― Jimmy Carter

“We cannot be both the world's leading champion of peace and the world's leading supplier of the weapons of war.”
― Jimmy Carter

“This Voyager spacecraft was constructed by the United States of America. We are a community of 240 million human beings among the more than 4 billion who inhabit the planet Earth. We human beings are still divided into nation states, but these states are rapidly becoming a single global civilization.

We cast this message into the cosmos. It is likely to survive a billion years into our future, when our civilization is profoundly altered and the surface of the Earth may be vastly changed. Of the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, some--perhaps many--may have inhabited planets and spacefaring civilizations. If one such civilization intercepts Voyager and can understand these recorded contents, here is our message:

This is a present from a small distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts, and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours. We hope someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination, and our good will in a vast and awesome universe”
― Jimmy Carter

“Human identity is no longer defined by what one does but rather by what one owns.”
― Jimmy Carter

“Spirit is like the wind, in that we can't see it but can see its effects, which are profound.”
― Jimmy Carter

“I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around
the world, this administration has been the worst in history...
The overt reversal of America's basic values as expressed by
previous administrations, including those of George H.W. Bush
and Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon and others, has been the
most disturbing to me.”
― Jimmy Carter

“Since 2001, the U.S. government has abandoned its role as a champion of human rights and has perpetrated terrible and illegal abuses in prisons in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, sent prisoners secretly to other nations to be tortured, denied the applicability of the Geneva Convention restraints, and severely restricted time-honored civil liberties within our own country. Certain political leaders of other nations, who are inclined to perpetrate human rights abuses to quiet dissenting voices and were previously restrained by positive influence from Washington, now feel free to emulate or exceed the abuses approved by American leaders.”
― Jimmy Carter, Beyond the White House: Waging Peace, Fighting Disease, Building Hope

“If you fear making anyone mad, then you ultimately probe for the lowest common denominator of human achievement.”
― Jimmy Carter

“The erosion of our confidence in the future is threating to destroy the Social and the Political fabric of America. The confidence that we have always had as a people, is not simply some romantic dream, or a proverb in a dusty book, that we read, just on the Fourth of July. It is the idea of which founded our nation and has guided us in our development as a people. Confidence in the future has supported everything else. We've always believed in a thing called, progress. We've always had a faith, that the days of our children, would be better than our own. Our people are losing that faith. For the first time in the history of our country, a majority of our people believe, that the next five years, will be worse than the past five years. We were taught that our armies were always invincible and our causes were always just, only to suffer the agony of Vietnam. We respected the presidency as a place of honor, until the shock of Watergate. We've got to stop crying and start sweating. Stop talking and start walking. Working together, with our common faith, we cannot fail.”
― Jimmy Carter

“I’m not in favor of the government mandating a prayer in school because our country was founded on the fact that no particular religious faith would have ascendance over or preferential treatment over any other.”
― Jimmy Carter

“It is interesting to note that an overwhelming majority of citizens in the world's three largest democracies have different religions: India (81 percent Hindu), the United States (76 percent Christian), and Indonesia (87 percent Muslim). Two of them have elected women as leaders of their government.”
― Jimmy Carter, A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power

“In every instance that I have known of with confrontation with the government and the press, the press was always right. So keep it up.”
― Jimmy Carter