President Carter Quotes

#1. President Carter inherited an impossible situation
and he and his advisers made the worst of it.

Gaddis Smith

#2. I'm a political scientist and I study these things, and I know that economic problems, with the rising unemployment and inflation and low productivity and so forth, were a factor in that election, in that defeat of President Carter.

Jeane Kirkpatrick

#3. In his 4 years in the White House, President Carter worked to make the Federal Government more competent and compassionate and more responsive to the American people.

Nathan Deal

#4. 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

#5. When I worked in the White House for President Carter, we tried to do comprehensive tax reform and we made some progress, and other presidents have as well.

David Rubenstein

#6. It seems to me that President Carter has earned his place as if not the worst president in history, the worst president of the 20th Century.

John McCain

#7. I would agree that President Carter didn't live up to the expectation we all had when he came in 1976. My husband and I were young idealists who worked on his campaign.

Michele Bachmann

#8. If you could have imagined that someone is happy that Obama is president, it has to be Jimmy Carter because he is no longer the worst president in our history.

Oliver North

#9. 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

#10. I refused to conform to an image that a lot of people thought a president's brother should adopt.

Billy Carter

#11. I believed what my father taught me about the separation of church and state, so when I was President I never invited Billy Graham to have services in the White House because I didn't think that was appropriate. He was injured a little bit, until I explained it to him.

Jimmy Carter

#12. President Obama was the most liberal and most incompetent president in my lifetime ever since Jimmy Carter.

Bobby Jindal

#13. We must uphold the promise of Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, and Clinton and never allow the President and his Republican friends to threaten Social Security by putting it on the Wall Street trading block.

John F. Kerry

#14. President Jimmy Carter was a citizen soldier. Ironically, he was considered weak because he didn't kill anybody and he didn't get anyone killed.

Andrew Young

#15. 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

#16. 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

#17. I don't think you can be a credible, modern candidate for president without making the environment a major part of your platform.

Graydon Carter

#18. President Ronald Reagan on his 1980 opponent: "I had a dream the other night. I dreamed that Jimmy Carter came to me and asked why I wanted his job. I told him I didn't want his job. I want to be President."

Bob Dole

#19. I have a very real political awareness that at least on a transient basis the more drastic action taken by the president, the more popular it is.

Jimmy Carter

#20. 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

#21. Jimmy Carter will go down in American history as 'the president who lost Iran,'

Barack Obama

#22. I've used the prestige and influence of having been a president of the United States as effectively as possible. And secondly, I've still been able to carry out my commitments to peace and human rights and environmental quality and freedom and democracy and so forth.

Jimmy Carter

#23. The danger of leaving overwhelming wealth and power in the grasp of a small minority is a lesson that leaders such as ousted Tunisian president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and deposed Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak have learned a little too late, as the demonstrations across the Arab world indicate.

Graydon Carter

#24. Four years of Jimmy Carter gave us two titanic Reagan landslides, peace and prosperity for eight blessed years - and even a third term for his feckless vice president, George H.W. Bush.

Ann Coulter

#25. We must make it clear that a platform of 'I hate gay men and women' is not a way to become president of the United States.

Jimmy Carter

#26. I think I was identified as a failed president because I wasn't re-elected.

Jimmy Carter

#27. My favourite president, and the one I admired most, was Harry Truman.

Jimmy Carter

#28. I enjoyed being president, but the campaign against Guinea worm [horrible disease] has opened up a completely new career that is challenging and unpredictable and adventurous - and very gratifying.

Jimmy Carter

#29. History buffs probably noted the reunion at a Washington party a few weeks ago of three ex-presidents: Carter, Ford and Nixon - See No Evil, Hear No Evil and Evil.

Bob Dole

#30. Indeed, one modern President abjured God altogether, ending speeches with a chaste 'Thank you very much.' This was Jimmy Carter, the most genuinely devout President of the postwar period.

Jonathan Rauch

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

Bill Drayton

#32. I grew up a child of Watergate. It gave me a good dose of skepticism about authority. One of my favorite movies is 'All the President's Men.' Woodward and Bernstein, those guys were my heroes. I have a degree in journalism.

Chris Carter

#33. Bush met with former President Jimmy Carter. Jimmy Carter is 76 years old, or as Democrats call him 'their bright new star of the future.'

David Letterman

#34. In Plains, I saw Jimmy Carter as he really is - a nice, decent man ... in terms of compassionate contribution to society, he certainly has proven to be our best past president.

Helen Thomas

#35. 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

#36. I can't deny I'm a better ex-president than I was a president.

Jimmy Carter

#37. Jimmy Carter as President is like Truman Capote marrying Dolly Parton. The job is just too big for him.

Rich Little

#38. People make a big fuss over you when you're President. But I'm very serious about doing everything I can to make sure that it doesn't go to my head.

Jimmy Carter

#39. 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

#40. 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

#41. During the Reagan years, government shut down eight different times under a Democrat Congress. The president and Congress worked together and got things straightened out. Under the Carter years, again a Democrat Congress, the government shut down five times.

Mitt Romney

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

Jimmy Carter

#43. 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

#44. During the Reagan Administration, Bob Dole was present at a ceremony that included each living ex-president. Looking at a tableau of Ford, Carter and Nixon, Dole said, 'There they are: Hear No Evil, See No Evil and Evil.'

Al Franken

#45. 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

#46. Carter is the only President to ever release his actual IQ from a standardized test; it was 176. That is higher than either Albert Einstein or Stephen Hawking, and is well into the genius level.

Robert Chamberlain

#47. 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

#48. The way I read Billy Carter's testimony, he was a model citizen himself until the voters went and ruined his life by making his brother President.

Calvin Trillin

#49. To work for better understanding among people, one does not have to be a former president sitting at a fancy conference room table. Peace can be made in the neighborhoods, the living rooms, the playing fields, and the classrooms of our country.

Jimmy Carter

#50. We cannot ignore our gift of the future.

Jimmy Carter

#51. 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

#52. 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

#53. Fighting back against Iran is difficult and costly. No American president from Carter to Obama has been willing to take it on.

Michael Ledeen

#54. 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

#55. 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

#56. I have been very interested and intrigued and congratulatory toward President Bush and his paintings.

Jimmy Carter

#57. Ever since Israel has been a nation the United States has provided the leadership. Every president down to the ages has done this in a fairly balanced way, including George Bush senior, Gerald Ford, and others including myself and Bill Clinton.

Jimmy Carter

#58. Our decision about energy will test the character of the American people and the ability of the President and the Congress to govern this Nation. This difficult effort will be the moral equivalent of war, except that we will be uniting our efforts to build and not to destroy.

Jimmy Carter

#59. I think there ought to be a strict separation or wall built between our religious faith and our practice of political authority in office. I don't think the President of the United States should extoll Christianity if he happens to be a Christian at the expense of Judaism, Islam or other faiths.

Jimmy Carter

#60. Jimmy Carter used to walk off the airplane carrying his own luggage. Do you remember that? I don't want my president carrying - I want the freaking Marines to be carrying his luggage, and they want to carry his luggage.

Donald Trump

#61. President Obama is a president so weak that he makes Jimmy Carter look strong.

Newt Gingrich

#62. 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

#63. 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

#64. I had just as much support from Republicans as I did Democrats when I ran for president. But I should have organized the Democratic Party to get me re-elected.

Jimmy Carter

#65. 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

#66. 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

#67. 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

#68. President Ford was taken for a ride by his predecessor, whom he unpardonably pardoned; Jimmy Carter was also taken for a ride, but by his successor, Ronald Reagan, over the return of the Iran hostages.

Nigel Hamilton

#69. In the current [Carter] administration, who can use the White House swimming pool and tennis courts is decided at the very highest level. President Ford did not bother himself with such minor details. He let me swim in the pool. He only got upset when I tried to walk across the water.

Henry A. Kissinger

#70. 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.

#71. I had very good support from Democrats and Republicans all throughout my administration. I had a very high batting average. We added more jobs per year in my four years than any other president since the Second World War.

Jimmy Carter

#72. 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

#73. Electing Barack Obama president was a glorious Jackie Robinson moment for the United States of America. Obama didn't just win; he became the first Democrat since Jimmy Carter to win a popular-vote majority.

Timothy Noah

#74. We cannot change the history of the past.

Jimmy Carter

#75. Being president is as difficult as writing the perfect poem. And being president is as effortless as writing the perfect poem. Always a Reckoning, my first collection of poetry, was described by Booklist as 'keenly evocative.'

Jimmy Carter

#76. 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

#77. When Reagan left office, he was the most unpopular living president, apart from Nixon, even below Carter. If you look at his years in office, he was not particularly popular. He was more or less average. He severely harmed the American economy.

Noam Chomsky

#78. 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

#79. Carter is the best President the Soviet Union ever had.

William Safire

#80. We cannot know the mystery of the future.

Jimmy Carter

#81. When it comes to jobs, President Obama makes the Jimmy Carter years look like good old days. If we fired Jimmy Carter then, why would we rehire Barack Obama now?

Paul Ryan

#82. 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

#83. In the last 100 years only Presidents George H.W. Bush, Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford lost their bids for reelection. President Lyndon Johnson did not run for a second term.

Juan Williams

#84. 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

#85. I look forward to these confrontations with the press to kind of balance up the nice and pleasant things that come to me as president.

Jimmy Carter

#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. I can get up at 8am and be rested ... or I can get up at 5am and be President.

Jimmy Carter