Top 300 Jimmy Carter Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “Iran is an island of stability in a turbulent corner of the world.”

— Jimmy Carter

52. “Our individual fates are linked our futures intertwined.”

— Jimmy Carter

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

— Jimmy Carter

54. “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

55. “Our Income Tax System is a disgrace to the human race.”

— Jimmy Carter

56. “Human rights is the soul of our foreign policy, because human rights is the very soul of our sense of nationhood.”

— Jimmy Carter

57. “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

58. “In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self indulgence and consumption .”

— Jimmy Carter

59. “We simply must balance our demand for energy with our rapidly shrinking resources. By acting now we can control our future instead of letting the future control us.”

— Jimmy Carter

60. “The abuse of women and girls is the most pervasive and unaddressed human right violation on earth.”

— Jimmy Carter

61. “This intolerable dependence on foreign oil threatens our economic independence and the very security of our nation. The energy crisis is real. It is worldwide. It is a clear and present danger to our nation. These are facts and we simply must face them.”

— Jimmy Carter

62. “But I am not discouraged. I do not despair for our country. I believe tonight, as I always have, that the essential decency, compassion and common sense of the American people will prevail.”

— Jimmy Carter

63. “We cannot be both the world’s leading champion of peace and the world’s leading supplier of the weapons of war.”

— Jimmy Carter

64. “I am pro-Israeli, not because of political expediency, but because I believe Israel is the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy.”

— Jimmy Carter

65. “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

66. “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

67. “I’ve committed adultery in my heart.”

— Jimmy Carter

68. “Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself.”

— Jimmy Carter

69. “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

70. “It’s a terrible and tragic and counterproductive policy to avoid communicating with people who disagree with us.”

— Jimmy Carter

71. “I am not here as a public official, but as a citizen of a troubled world who finds hope in a growing consensus that the generally accepted goals of society are peace, freedom, human rights, environmental quality, the alleviation of suffering, and the rule of law.”

— Jimmy Carter

72. “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

73. “Our values are not luxuries, but necessities. They are not the salt in our bread, but the bread itself.”

— Jimmy Carter

74. “It’s not necessary to fear the prospect of failure but to be determined not to fail.”

— Jimmy Carter

75. “The pre-eminent obstacle to peace is Israel’s colonization of Palestine.”

— Jimmy Carter

76. “There was promulgation of false propaganda by the administration about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. There was promulgation of false propaganda about Iraq as a base for Al Qaeda.”

— Jimmy Carter

77. “You just have to have a simple faith.”

— Jimmy Carter

78. “We cannot change the history of the past.”

— Jimmy Carter

79. “Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.”

— Jimmy Carter

80. “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

81. “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

82. “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

83. “I say to you quite frankly that the time for racial discrimination is over.”

— Jimmy Carter

84. “Wherever life takes us, there are always moments of wonder.”

— 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. “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

87. “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

88. “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

89. “Many of the most highly publicized events of my presidency are not nearly as memorable or significant in my life as fishing with my daddy.”

— Jimmy Carter

90. “No matter where you go in the world in any country in Africa or Latin America and other place, you will find that China is very deeply involved in the affairs of that country.”

— Jimmy Carter

91. “Hubert Horatio Hornblower...”

— Jimmy Carter

92. “I have often wanted to drown my troubles, but I can’t get my wife to go swimming.”

— Jimmy Carter

93. “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

94. “History teaches, perhaps, very few clear lessons. But surely one such lesson learned by the world at great cost is that aggression, unopposed, becomes a contagious disease.”

— Jimmy Carter

95. “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

96. “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

97. “We should live our lives as though Christ was coming this afternoon.”

— Jimmy Carter

98. “In this great country of ours, it is inexcusable that so many children grow up in poverty and despair. The well-being of our children must be the national priority and the responsibility of every individual...”

— Jimmy Carter

99. “My proudest accomplishment was that I never dropped a bomb, fired a bullet, or shot a missile.”

— Jimmy Carter

100. “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