Top 100 Jimmy Carter Quotes
#1. I think the most challenging thing for me in my life and in the Bible is that we worship Jesus as the Prince of Peace.
Jimmy Carter
#2. For the first time in the history of our country the majority of our people believe that the next five years will be worse than the past five years.
Jimmy Carter
#3. My position has always been, along with many other people, that any differences be resolved in a nonviolent way.
Jimmy Carter
#4. In the bible homosexuality is condemned, but along with divorce and greed and callousness toward poor people. So its elevation to a highest priority among some religious groups has been very disturbing to me.
Jimmy Carter
#5. America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense ... human rights invented America.
Jimmy Carter
#6. You have given me a great responsibility: to stay close to you, to be worthy of you and to exemplify what you are.
Jimmy Carter
#7. Nearly all inmates are drawn from the ranks of the powerless and the poor. A child of privilege frequently receives the benefit of the doubt; a child of poverty seldom does.
Jimmy Carter
#8. I've never won an argument with my wife; and the only time I thought I had I found out the argument wasn't over yet.
Jimmy Carter
#9. Each one of us is an individual, just like talk show hosts are different from one another, and newspaper columnists are different from each other. So, former presidents are different from each other, too. Some have gone into relative seclusion. Some have decided to teach.
Jimmy Carter
#10. We've become increasingly addicted to consumption of goods that we don't produce ourselves, and a lot of the manufacturing has gone overseas.
Jimmy Carter
#11. A nation's domestic and foreign policies and actions should be derived from the same standards of ethics, honesty and morality which are characteristic of the individual citizens of the nation.
Jimmy Carter
#12. I never considered disobeying an order or even a request from Daddy. I loved and admired him, and one of my preeminent goals in life was to earn his approbation. I learned to expect his criticisms, always constructive, but his accolades were rare. My
Jimmy Carter
#13. I have been very interested and intrigued and congratulatory toward President Bush and his paintings.
Jimmy Carter
#14. To be true to ourselves, we must be true to others.
Jimmy Carter
#15. 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
#16. I think, in many people's minds, the Confederate battle flag is not only a memorial to our ancestors, which is perfectly OK, but also a symbol of white superiority and an inclination for people to believe that even slavery would've been OK.
Jimmy Carter
#17. I'm an expert typist. I learned in high school. I would close my eyes and just type without worrying about mistakes. I tried to penetrate my heart, and as I let my thoughts drift, things bubbled up to the surface.
Jimmy Carter
#18. We reached a high point in my opinion with the passage of the civil rights legislation and Martin Luther King's success and the crusade of others. I think we kind of breathed a sigh of relief as if we had achieved the end of racial discrimination or white supremacy.
Jimmy Carter
#19. If I go to Italy, I will certainly request to meet with Pope Francis, whom I admire very much.
Jimmy Carter
#20. The Bible and studying the Bible has been an important part of my life.
Jimmy Carter
#21. When I was in the White House, I was confronted with the challenge of the Cold War. Both the Soviet Union and I had 30,000 nuclear weapons that could destroy the entire earth and I had to maintain the peace.
Jimmy Carter
#22. In retrospect, I can see that President Brezhnev was quite proud of the limited agreement that he had concluded in Vladivostok; and to have a new American president come in and say, "That is not good enough - let's do much more, and do it quite rapidly," took him by surprise.
Jimmy Carter
#23. Because we are now running out of gas and oil, we must prepare quickly for a third change, to strict conservation and to the use of ... permanent renewable energy sources, like solar power.
Jimmy Carter
#24. Last night when I was commenting on the FBI and the CIA, the sound went off for 27 minutes. I should have known better.
Jimmy Carter
#25. My constant prayer, my number one foreign goal, is to bring peace to Israel. And in the process to Israel's neighbours.
Jimmy Carter
#26. We simply must have faith in each other, faith in our ability to govern ourselves, and faith in the future of this Nation. Restoring that faith and that confidence to America is now the most important task we face.
Jimmy Carter
#27. The experience of democracy is like the experience of life itself-always changing, infinite in its variety, sometimes turbulent and all the more valuable for having been tested by adversity.
Jimmy Carter
#28. I believe strongly that in the eyes of God women and men should be the same and they should be given the same authority in the church, women should as men.
Jimmy Carter
#29. Whether the borders that divide us are picket fences or national boundaries, we are all neighbors in a global community.
Jimmy Carter
#30. The government ought to stay out of the prayer business.
Jimmy Carter
#31. Globalization, as defined by rich people like us, is a very nice thing ... you are talking about the Internet, you are talking about cell phones, you are talking about computers. This doesn't affect two-thirds of the people of the world.
Jimmy Carter
#32. This war has been motivated by pride or arrogance, by a desire to control oil wealth, by a desire to implant our programs. (talking about the Iraq war)
Jimmy Carter
#33. I think a good husband has to depend on having a good wife.
Jimmy Carter
#34. We have a special relationship with Israel. It's absolutely crucial that no one in our country or around the world ever doubt that our number one committment in the Middle East is to protect the right of Israel to exist, to exist permanently, and to exist in peace. It's a special relationship.
Jimmy Carter
#35. I'm taking special treatments for the cancer in my brain and in my liver. Part of the liver was removed, and they did the treatment on four places in my brain with radiation. And now I'm taking a long-term medicine that stimulates my own immune system to fight against cancer.
Jimmy Carter
#36. No poor, rural, weak, or black person should ever again have to bear the additional burden of being deprived of the opportunity for an education, a job, or simple justice.
Jimmy Carter
#37. Ours is the most wasteful nation on Earth. We waste more energy than we import. With about the same standard of living, we use twice as much energy per person as do other countries like Germany, Japan, and Sweden.
Jimmy Carter
#38. I think doctors care very deeply about their patients, but when they organize into the AMA, their responsibility is to the welfare of doctors, and quite often, these lobbying groups are the only ones that are heard in the state capitols and in the capitol of our country.
Jimmy Carter
#39. It's clear that the true problems of our Nation are much deeper - deeper than gasoline lines of energy shortages, deeper even than inflation or recession. And I realize more than ever that as President I need your help. So, I decided to reach out and listen to the voices of America.
Jimmy Carter
#40. My - both my sisters died with pancreatic cancer. My brother died with pancreatic cancer. My daddy died of pancreatic cancer. My mother died with breast cancer.
Jimmy Carter
#41. Americans long thought that nature could take care of itself-or that if it did not, the consequences were someone else's problem. As we know now, that assumption was wrong; none of us is a stranger to environmental problems.
Jimmy Carter
#42. There's no way now for you to get a Democratic or Republican nomination without being able to raise $200 or $300 million or more. I would not be inclined to do that, and I would not be capable of doing it.
Jimmy Carter
#43. I'll never tell a lie. I'll never make a misleading statement. I'll never betray the confidence that any of you had in me. And I'll never avoid a controversial issue.
Jimmy Carter
#44. One of our nation's greatest leaders of all time was Hubert Horatio Hornblower.
Jimmy Carter
#45. There is a strong religious commitment to the sanctity of human life, but, paradoxically, some of the most fervent protectors of microscopic stem cells are the most ardent proponents of the death penalty.
Jimmy Carter
#46. Each of us must rededicate ourselves to serving the common good. We are a community. Our individual Fates are linked; our futures intertwined; and if we act in that knowledge and in that spirit together, as the Bible says: "We can move mountains."
Jimmy Carter
#47. Our individual fates are linked our futures intertwined
Jimmy Carter
#49. When I was elected President nobody asked me to negotiate between Israel and Egypt. It was not even a question raised in my campaign. But I felt that one of the reasons that I was elected President was to try to bring peace to the Holy Land.
Jimmy Carter
#50. The test of a government is not how popular it is with the powerful and privileged few but how honestly and fairly it deals with the many who must depend on it.
Jimmy Carter
#51. When men in secular life, who might be religious or not, see women being treated as secondary in the eyes of God, they assume that it's OK for them to do it.
Jimmy Carter
#52. One of the most serious problems that our country has inherited an unwillingness to talk to anyone who disagrees with us or who won't accept, before a discussion, all the premises that we demand.
Jimmy Carter
#53. We should live our lives as though Christ was coming this afternoon.
Jimmy Carter
#54. We only have to recall the color of the faces of those who were most devastated by Katrina, to know that there are not yet equal opportunities for all Americans.
Jimmy Carter
#55. I don't claim to be knowledgeable about theology. Most of my knowledge comes out of my experience and the lessons in the Bible. Every Sunday I'm home I teach 45 minutes and we boiled them down to one page for the new book, 'Through the Year with Jimmy Carter.'
Jimmy Carter
#56. Go out on a limb. That's where the fruit is.
Jimmy Carter
#57. I can't think of a man more worthy of the presidency then my good friend Sam Nunn.
Jimmy Carter
#58. I see a lot of parallels between my candidacy and the Tea Party. I would not have been elected had there not been a tremendous amount of dissatisfaction and discouragement and disgust with what was going on in Washington.
Jimmy Carter
#59. Jerry Falwell can go straight to hell - and I mean that in a Christian way.
Jimmy Carter
#60. If any agreement between two nations is to last, it must serve the best interests of both nations.
Jimmy Carter
#61. I have never been disappointed when I asked in a humble and sincere way for God's help. I pray often. I think I pray more often since January 12th.
Jimmy Carter
#62. God always answers prayers. Sometimes it's "yes." Sometimes the answer is "no." Sometimes it's "you gotta be kidding.
Jimmy Carter
#63. I've been an evangelistic Baptist all my life and still am to some degree.
Jimmy Carter
#64. I think the only way that political system can be corrected is for the American people to see very vividly that it needs repair. If things are going to worse in the future, the American people, in every congressional district in the land, might demand that reforms take place in the political system.
Jimmy Carter
#65. For this generation, ours, life is nuclear survival, liberty is human rights, the pursuit of happiness is a planet whose resources are devoted to the physical and spiritual nourishment of its inhabitants.
Jimmy Carter
#66. Then when [ISIS] moved into Iraq, the Sunni Muslims didn't object to their being there and about a third of the territory in Iraq was abandoned.
Jimmy Carter
#67. I have come to realize that in every person there is something fine and pure and noble, along with a desire for self-fulfillment.
Jimmy Carter
#68. I obviously hoped that everything that I found would make a difference, ... It ended up being way behind my wildest dreams.
Jimmy Carter
#69. You only have to have two loves in your life: for God, and for the person in front of you at any particular time.
Jimmy Carter
#70. I have often wanted to drown my troubles, but I can't get my wife to go swimming.
Jimmy Carter
#71. This afternoon, I've arranged for this ceremony to be illuminated by solar power.
Jimmy Carter
#72. Being confident of our own future, we are now free of that inordinate fear of communism which once led us to embrace any dictator who joined us in that fear. I'm glad that that's being changed.
Jimmy Carter
#73. Too many of us now tend to worship self indulgence and consumption.
Jimmy Carter
#74. There needs to be a similar degree of flexibility and generosity in the recognition of the humaneness and worth of people who we generally consider as adversaries.
Jimmy Carter
#75. I can't really criticize the Tea Party people, because I came into the White House pretty much on the same basis that they have become popular. That is dissatisfaction with the way things are going in Washington and disillusionment and disencouragement about the government.
Jimmy Carter
#76. The government and the church are two different realms of service, and those in political office have to face a subtle but important difference between the implementation of the high ideals of religious faith and public duty.
Jimmy Carter
#77. Faith implies a continuing search, not necessarily a final answer.
Jimmy Carter
#78. We have the deepest respect and reverence for Islam and all who share the faith of Islam.
Jimmy Carter
#79. People would ask me how I could stand the long campaigning, how I could stand being charged with the responsibilities of a great nation, one of the most powerful and difficult jobs in the world.
It wasn't any more difficult than picking cotton all day or shaking peanuts.
Jimmy Carter
#80. We are of course a nation of differences. Those differences don't make us weak. They're the source of our strength.
Jimmy Carter
#81. Well, you know, I had been a peanut farmer. I had - you know who was the first president - Democratic president I ever met? Bill Clinton.
Jimmy Carter
#82. I think my wife ... is sure of my loyalty ... She knows how hard I work. She knows how tired I am every night. She knows I have fifty or sixty reporters watching me day and night.
Jimmy Carter
#83. One of the surprising things that Brezhnev said when we were in our talks, was - when I proposed that we make these changes in nuclear weaponry, he said, "God will never forgive us if we don't succeed." And, you know, coming from the leader of an atheistic communist country, this surprised everyone.
Jimmy Carter
#84. And I think the almost undeviating support by Great Britain for the ill-advised policies of President Bush in Iraq have been a major tragedy for the world.
Jimmy Carter
#85. Unless both sides win, no agreement can be permanent.
Jimmy Carter
#86. There is no other even moderately equal abuse than the murder of little baby girls - nothing else compares with that, in horror.
Jimmy Carter
#87. [Jerry Brown] is California's way of celebrating the Year of the Child.
Jimmy Carter
#88. We are a purely idealistic Nation but let no one confuse our idealism with weakness
Jimmy Carter
#89. Our Center would be nonpartisan; we would be as innovative as possible, not duplicating or competing with other organizations that were addressing issues successfully; we would not be afraid of possible failure if our goals were worthwhile; and we would operate always with a balanced budget. The
Jimmy Carter
#90. The awareness that health is dependent upon habits that we control makes us the first generation in history that to a large extent determines its own destiny.
Jimmy Carter
#91. I am a nuclear physicist by training and a deeply committed Christian. I don't have any doubt in my own mind about God who created the entire universe. But I don't adhere to passages that so and so was created 4,000 years before Christ, and things of that kind.
Jimmy Carter
#92. As we ask God for some blessing, we have an obligation to participate ourselves in the fulfillment of those dreams, aspirations, hopes, and ideas.
Jimmy Carter
#93. There has never been any evidence that the death penalty reduces capital crimes or that crimes increased when executions stopped. Tragic mistakes are prevalent ... It is clear that there are overwhelming ethical, financial, and religious reasons to abolish the death penalty.
Jimmy Carter
#94. This is the first national administration we've ever seen where the housewife couldn't afford to buy groceries and the farmer couldn't afford to grow them.
Jimmy Carter
#95. I don't want to tell President Obama how to make a speech. He's a much better speech maker than I am. But I think always to tell the truth in a sometimes blatant way, even though it might be temporarily unpopular, is the best approach.
Jimmy Carter
#96. Whatever starts in California unfortunately has an inclination to spread.
Jimmy Carter
#97. 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
#98. We believe in separation of church and state, that there should be no unwarranted influence on the church or religion by the state, and vice versa.
Jimmy Carter
#99. 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
#100. The evidence shows that investing in women and girls delivers major benefits for society. An educated woman has healthier children. She is more likely to send them to school. She earns more and invests what she earns in her family.
Jimmy Carter
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