Jimmy Carter's Quotes

#1. What changed their mind was Jimmy Carter's intervention against the Christian schools, trying to deny them tax-exempt status on the basis of so-called de facto segregation.

Paul Weyrich

#2. We saw what happened in Jimmy Carter's administration. President Carter was a good man with the best of intentions. But he came to Washington without a good working relationship with Democratic members of Congress, which played a big part in his administration's problems.

Jim Hunt

#3. The only book by a modern president that bears serious comparison with Obama's 'Dreams From My Father' is Jimmy Carter's short campaign autobiography, 'Why Not the Best?,' published in 1975.

Jonathan Raban

#4. New Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said that he is open to letting transgender people serve in the military. He said there's no reason to prevent people from being generals just because of their privates.

Jimmy Fallon

#5. 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

#6. 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

#7. He [Jimmy Carter] says his lust is in his heart. I hope it's a little lower.

Shirley Maclaine

#8. There's a common perception among college administrators that they should conceal the high level of sexual assaults that take place on their campuses because it would bring discredit to the university, bring them a bad name if it was publicized.

Jimmy Carter

#9. The President publicly apologized today to all those offended by his brother's remark, There's more Arabs in this country than there is Jews! Those offended include Arabs, Jews, and English teachers.

Jimmy Carter

#10. God always answers prayers. Sometimes it's "yes." Sometimes the answer is "no." Sometimes it's "you gotta be kidding.

Jimmy Carter

#11. Elvis was a symbol of the country's vitality, rebelliousness, and good humor.

Jimmy Carter

#12. 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

#13. Always I'm working on some of book. That's the way I make a living.

Jimmy Carter

#14. We've become, now, an oligarchy instead of a democracy. I think that's been the worst damage to the basic moral and ethical standards to the American political system that I've ever seen in my life.

Jimmy Carter

#15. It's very difficult for the American people to believe that our government, one of the richest on Earth, is also one of the stingiest on Earth.

Jimmy Carter

#16. Go out on a limb. That's where the fruit is.

Jimmy Carter

#17. Pundits are saying that President Obama is starting to lose support among his own party. To give you an idea of how bad it's gotten, today Jimmy Carter compared him to Jimmy Carter.

Jay Leno

#18. 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

#19. The fact is that we would have had comprehensive health care now, had it not been for Ted Kennedy's deliberately blocking the legislation that I proposed in 1978 or '79.

Jimmy Carter

#20. I don't believe that Jesus would approve abortion except in the case of incest, rape or the mother's life in danger. But I had to enforce the Supreme Court ruling on Roe v. Wade so I tried to do everything I could to minimize the need for abortions.

Jimmy Carter

#21. It's not our job to choose the best Sunday school teacher, like Jimmy Carter was. It's our job to choose who would defend and protect our nation, who would be the best president.

Jerry Falwell Jr.

#22. We believe that the first time we're born, as children, it's human life given to us; and when we accept Jesus as our Savior, it's a new life. That's what "born again" means.

Jimmy Carter

#23. One of our nation's greatest leaders of all time was Hubert Horatio Hornblower.

Jimmy Carter

#24. There's no doubt that usually a president's public image is enhanced by going to war. That never did appeal to me.

Jimmy Carter

#25. You can not divorce religious belief and public service. I've never detected any conflict between God's will and my political duty. If you violate one, you violate the other.

Jimmy Carter

#26. Within the stable economy it's necessary to eliminate all forms of sexual discrimination, and to provide women for the first time in our history with economic opportunities equal to those of men.

Jimmy Carter

#27. 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's a weak nation, like a weak person, that must behave with bluster and boasting and rashness and other signs of insecurity.

Jimmy Carter

#28. Under Lenin the Soviet Union was like a religious revival, under Stalin like a prison, under Khrushchev like a circus, and under Brezhnev like the U.S. Post Office.

Jimmy Carter

#29. It is good to realize that if love and peace can prevail on earth, and if we can teach our children to honor nature's gifts, the joys and beauties of the outdoors will be here forever.

Jimmy Carter

#30. White House cultures inevitably reflect the president's character. Jimmy Carter is a thoroughly honest, good person. So was his White House.

Bill Drayton

#31. Israel's continued control and colonization of Palestinian land have been the primary obstacles to a comprehensive peace agreement in the Holy Land.

Jimmy Carter

#32. 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

#33. One undeniable accomplishment of Bill Clinton's presidency was that it kept Jimmy Carter from being the worst U.S. president in history.

Thomas Sowell

#34. During the 1960s, we used twice as much oil as during the 1950s. And in each of those decades, more oil was consumed than in all of mankind's previous history.

Jimmy Carter

#35. I am not going to use the federal government's authority deliberately to circumvent the natural inclination of people to live in ethnic homogeneous neighborhoods.

Jimmy Carter

#36. 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

#37. Just when you think there's nothing to write about, Nixon says, 'I am not a crook.' Jimmy Carter says, 'I have lusted after women in my heart.' President Reagan says, 'I have just taken a urinalysis test, and I am not on dope.

Art Buchwald

#38. We cannot be both the world's leading champion of peace and the world's leading supplier of the weapons of war.

Jimmy Carter

#39. It's abominable, and it's a disgrace to a great democracy to see what's happened in our country. The main reason for that has been the enormous infusion of high quantities of money to campaigns - governors, Congress, president and the U.S. Senate.

Jimmy Carter

#40. Jimmy used to drink liquor. Now he's running for president and he drinks Scotch, and I've never trusted a Scotch-drinker.

Billy Carter

#41. My life since the White House has been much more all-encompassing, much more enjoyable. The main thing that I've acquired has been access to the poorest and most destitute, forgotten, and suffering people on Earth. It's not possible for a President to actually know them.

Jimmy Carter

#42. [Jerry Brown] is California's way of celebrating the Year of the Child.

Jimmy Carter

#43. I am no big shot. I am not anybody's boss. I want to be everybody's servant.

Jimmy Carter

#44. We'll never know whether something new and wonderful is possible unless we try. Let's scratch our heads, stretch our minds, be adventurous! Serve God with boldness, and who knows what wonders the Lord may work?

Jimmy Carter

#45. When you single out any particular group of people for secondary citizenship status, that's a violation of basic human rights.

Jimmy Carter

#46. A troubled economy is always the sitting president's fault. It was when Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter, when Bill Clinton defeated George H.W. Bush, and when Barack Obama defeated John McCain by running against George W. Bush.

Mark McKinnon

#47. In 1976, Jimmy Carter - peanut farmer; carried his own suitcase, imagine that - somewhat tapped America's durable but shallow reservoir of populism. By 1980, ordinariness in high office had lost its allure.

George Will

#48. The pre-eminent obstacle to peace is Israel's colonization of Palestine.

Jimmy Carter

#49. We have no desire to be the world's policeman. But America does want to be the world's peacemaker.

Jimmy Carter

#50. I just look at death as not a threat. It's inevitable, and I have an assurance of eternal life.

Jimmy Carter

#51. I think what's going on in Guantanamo Bay and other places is a disgrace to the U.S.A. I wouldn't say it's the cause of terrorism, but it has given impetus and excuses to potential terrorists to lash out at our country and justify their despicable acts.

Jimmy Carter

#52. I toured in Europe first, before I did any touring in the U.S. It was with Jimmy Nail and others.

Deana Carter

#53. Barack Obama's discovering what a nightmare dealing with hostage problems is - a discovery previously made by Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, i don't see a lot of room for change in American policy.

Bruce Riedel

#54. In the United States, you might say every county has got its own separate system. There's not even one kind of ballot that you use all over the United States. We require that in a foreign country.

Jimmy Carter

#55. 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

#56. 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

#57. Throughout my life, I've seen the difference that volunteering efforts can make in people's lives. I know the personal value of service as a local volunteer.

Jimmy Carter

#58. I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he's African American.

Jimmy Carter

#59. I've looked on many women with lust. I've committed adultery in my heart many times. God knows I will do this and forgives me.

Jimmy Carter

#60. My position has always been, along with many other people, that any differences be resolved in a nonviolent way.

Jimmy Carter

#61. Future historians will be able to study at the Jimmy Carter Library, the Gerald Ford Library, the Ronald Reagan Library, and the Bill Clinton Adult Bookstore.

George Carlin

#62. I remember the last three days that I was president, I never went to bed at all. I never went to bed until we had negotiated the final release of the hostages.

Jimmy Carter

#63. As has been emphasized vigorously by foreign allies and by responsible leaders of former administrations and incumbent officeholders, there is no current danger to the United States from Baghdad.

Jimmy Carter

#64. I'm a peanut farmer at heart, still grow peanuts on my farm in Georgia.

Jimmy Carter

#65. Europeans have always thought of U.S. presidents as either naive, as they did with Jimmy Carter, or as cowboys, as they did with Lyndon Johnson, and held them in contempt in either case.

George Friedman

#66. The malaise and military decline of the post-Vietnam years under President Jimmy Carter set the stage for Russian aggression abroad and uncertainty among our allies.

Paul Cook

#67. Every advance in this half-century-Social Security, civil rights, Medicare, aid to education, one after another-came with the support and leadership of American Labor.

Jimmy Carter

#68. It's a terrible and tragic and counterproductive policy to avoid communicating with people who disagree with us.

Jimmy Carter

#69. Although military, economic and political strength certainly favors the more powerful side, the matter of simple justice is a counterbalancing factor.

Jimmy Carter

#70. Carter is doing a high-wire act over a cesspool, preaching all the way. Sinclair Lewis, thou shouldst be living in this hour. We have a Warren Harding impersonating Elmer Gantry.

Jimmy Carter

#71. I think it will take years before we can repair the damage done by that statement.

Jimmy Carter

#72. No doubt the ridiculous politicians are right to like politics. They have found careers in which success can be achieved by being ridiculous. Imagine Jimmy Carter or George W. Bush rising to the top of any other profession.

P. J. O'Rourke

#73. 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

#74. There are examples of ex-presidents speaking out. Jimmy Carter has not held back on a variety of issues. Harry Truman didn't.

Robert Dallek

#75. If you're totally illiterate and living on one dollar a day, the benefits of globalization never come to you.

Jimmy Carter

#76. 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

#77. Habitat gives us an opportunity which is very difficult to find: to reach out and work side by side with those who never have had a decent home-but work with them on a completely equal basis. It's not a big-shot, little-shot relationship. It's a sense of equality.

Jimmy Carter

#78. If I were president, I'd be very glad to see the Palestinians have a nation recognized by the United Nations. There's no downside to it.

Jimmy Carter

#79. 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

#80. It's not necessary to fear the prospect of failure but to be determined not to fail.

Jimmy Carter

#81. There's always enough to fill up the headlines in a newspaper, the evening news broadcasts. I'm always grateful when I get the weekly news magazines on Monday morning and don't see my picture on the front.

Jimmy Carter

#82. My paintings have gotten to be pretty popular and I've taken a little bit more interest in painting the last few years. In fact, my novel that I wrote not too long ago, 'The Hornet's Nest,' I painted the cover picture for it and I do a good bit of painting now.

Jimmy Carter

#83. 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

#84. 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

#85. Liberals are constantly wrong. In fact, that's how you rise to the top in liberalism, by being wrong. If you are wrong, and if you are consistently wrong, it's even better. You're really one of them if you're really wrong all the time. Look at Jimmy Carter.

Rush Limbaugh

#86. During a recent press conference, former President Jimmy Carter said he could never run for president today because he doesn't have a lot of money. Well, that and the fact that he's the famously bad president Jimmy Carter.

Jimmy Fallon

#87. 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

#88. My opinion of the Russians has changed most drastically in the last week than even (sic) the two-and-a-half years before that. It's only now dawning upon the world the magnitude of the action that the Soviets undertook in invading Afghanistan.

Jimmy Carter

#89. The Carter Center has the only existing international taskforce on disease eradication. Which means a total elimination of a disease on the face of the Earth. In the history of the world, there's only been one disease eradicated: smallpox. The second disease, I think, is gonna be guinea worm.

Jimmy Carter

#90. I hate to see complacency prevail in our lives when it's so directly contrary to the teaching of Christ.

Jimmy Carter

#91. War and good health are incompatible. There's no way we can go [eradicate diseases] into an area that is at war.

Jimmy Carter

#92. My constant prayer, my number one foreign goal, is to bring peace to Israel. And in the process to Israel's neighbours.

Jimmy Carter

#93. Here's a foolproof method for keeping America safe. Always do the exact 180-degree opposite of whatever [Jimmy] Carter says, as quickly as possible.

Ann Coulter

#94. 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

#95. To say that Jimmy Carter does not understand politics or is not a good politician denies the phenomenon by which he got to the White House. He is without question the best politician, when he's working at it, of anybody I have ever seen.

Hamilton Jordan

#96. Two centuries ago our nation's birth was a milestone in the long quest for freedom, but the bold and brilliant dream which excited the founders of our nation still awaits its consummation. I have no new dream to set forth today, but rather urge a fresh faith in the old dream.

Jimmy Carter

#97. 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

#98. I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out under another, then under another Democrat president, Jimmy Carter. I'm not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it's an interesting coincidence.

Michele Bachmann

#99. 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

#100. In critical ways, Obama has reversed not just Bush policy but every president's approach to the world since the Second World War, save for that of his soulmate Jimmy Carter.

Elliott Abrams