Jimmy Carter Quotes

167 Sourced Quotes

There is an inherent feeling among many in this country that an African-American should not be president.

Jimmy Carter
I obviously hoped that everything that I found would make a difference, … It ended up being way behind my wildest dreams.

Jimmy Carter
A simple and a proper function of government is just to make it easy for us to do good and difficult for us to do wrong.

Jimmy Carter
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
The existing and long-standing use of the word 'evolution' in our state's textbooks has not adversely affected Georgians' belief in the omnipotence of God as creator of the universe, There can be no incompatibility between Christian faith and proven facts concerning geology, biology, and astronomy. There is no need to teach that stars can fall out of the sky and land on a flat Earth in order to defend our religious faith.

Jimmy Carter
We have already found a high degree of personal liberty, and we are now struggling to enhance equality of opportunity. Our commitment to human rights must be absolute, our laws fair, our natural beauty preserved; the powerful must not persecute the weak, and human dignity must be enhanced.

Jimmy Carter
In repudiating extremism, we need to recommit ourselves to a few common-sense principles that should transcend partisan differences.
First, we cannot enhance our own security if we place in jeopardy what is most precious to us, namely the centrality of human rights in our daily lives and in global affairs.
Second, we cannot maintain our historic self-confidence as a people if we generate public panic.
Third, we cannot do our duty as citizens and patriots if we pursue an agenda that polarizes and divides our country.
Next, we cannot be true to ourselves if we mistreat others.
And finally, in the world at large, we cannot lead if our leaders mislead.

Jimmy Carter
It would be a fruitless search to look through the Scriptures and find one single instance where Jesus did not treat women either equal or superior to men.

Jimmy Carter
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
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
Everyone who has run knows that its most important value is in removing tension and allowing a release from whatever other cares the day may bring.

Jimmy Carter
I guess my biggest failure was not getting reelected. [The loss taught me] not to ever let American hostages be held for 444 days in a foreign country without extracting them. I did the best I could, but I failed.

Jimmy Carter
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
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
I believe in the separation of church and state and would not use my authority to violate this principle in any way.

Jimmy Carter
Ours was the first society openly to define itself in terms of both spirituality and of human liberty. It is that unique self-definition which has given us an exceptional appeal, but it also imposes on us a special obligation, to take on those moral duties which, when assumed, seem invariably to be in our own best interests.

Jimmy Carter
When combined, the small individual contributors of caring, friendship, forgiveness, and love, each of us different from our next-door neighbors, can form a phalanx, an army, with great capability.

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

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
Sometimes we try to justify this unsavory business on the cynical ground that by rationing out the means of violence we can somehow control the world's violence. The fact is that we cannot have it both ways. Can we be both the world's leading champion of peace and the world's leading supplier of the weapons of war?

Jimmy Carter
Well, as you know, there are many things in life that are not fair, that wealthy people can afford and poor people cant. But I don't believe that the Federal Government should take action to try to make these opportunities exactly equal, particularly when there is a moral factor involved.

Jimmy Carter
I've looked on a lot of women with lust. I've committed adultery in my heart many times. This is something that God recognizes I will do—and I have done it—and God forgives me for it.

Jimmy Carter
Acknowledging the physical realities of our planet does not mean a dismal future of endless sacrifice. In fact, acknowledging these realities is the first step in dealing with them. We can meet the resource problems of the world — water, food, minerals, farmlands, forests, overpopulation, pollution — if we tackle them with courage and foresight.

Jimmy Carter
To be true to ourselves, we must be true to others. We will not behave in foreign places so as to violate our rules and standards here at home, for we know that the trust which our Nation earns is essential to our strength.

Jimmy Carter
I am determined that at the end of this administration we shall be able to stand up anywhere in the world—in New York, California, or Florida—and say I'm a Georgian, and be proud of it.

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

Jimmy Carter
America does not at the moment have a functioning democracy.

Jimmy Carter
If we do not learn to eliminate waste and to be more productive and more efficient in the ways we use energy, then we will fall short of this goal [for the Nation to derive 20 percent of all the energy we use from the Sun, by 2000]. But if we use our technological imagination, if we can work together to harness the light of the Sun, the power of the wind, and the strength of rushing streams, then we will succeed.

Jimmy Carter
Today, in directly harnessing the power of the Sun, we're taking the energy that God gave us, the most renewable energy that we will ever see, and using it to replace our dwindling supplies of fossil fuels.

Jimmy Carter