Top 300 Jimmy Carter Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “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

102. “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

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

— Jimmy Carter

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

— Jimmy Carter

105. “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

106. “In the final analysis, true justice is not a matter of courts and law books, but of a commitment in each of us to liberty and mutual respect.”

— Jimmy Carter

107. “A joyous occasion is never quite as wonderful as when it becomes a memory.”

— Jimmy Carter

108. “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

109. “If I become President, I’ll make every piece of information this country has about UFO sightings available to the public, and the scientists. I am convinced that UFOs exist because I’ve seen one...”

— Jimmy Carter

110. “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

111. “Habitat has opened up unprecedented opportunities for me to cross the chasm that separates those of us who are free, safe, financially secure, well fed and housed, and influential enough to shape our own destiny from our neighbors who enjoy few, if any, of these advantages of life.”

— Jimmy Carter

112. “It is difficult for the common good to prevail against the intense concentration of those who have a special interest, especially if the decisions are made behind locked doors.”

— Jimmy Carter

113. “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

114. “I just look at death as not a threat. It’s inevitable, and I have an assurance of eternal life.”

— Jimmy Carter

115. “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

116. “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

117. “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

118. “A country will have authority and influence because of moral factors, not its military strength; because it can be humble and not blatant and arrogant; because our people want to serve others and not dominate others. And a nation without morality will soon lose its influence around the world.”

— Jimmy Carter

119. “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

120. “When people are intimidated about having their own opinions, oppression is at hand.”

— Jimmy Carter

121. “Our American values are not luxuries but necessities, not the salt in our bread, but the bread itself. Our common vision of a free and just society is our greatest source of cohesion at home and strength abroad, greater than the bounty of our material blessings.”

— Jimmy Carter

122. “Later, when Bob Hope came to visit us, he made a wisecrack about being a Republican and I announced that he would be moving from the Lincoln Bedroom to sleep in Amy’s tree house.”

— Jimmy Carter

123. “The first time I ever saw snow skis was when I was 62 years old and that was 19 years ago and I’m still skiing. So, we’ll be skiing with some very close friends of the Carter Center letting them know what the Carter Center is doing around the world. We have programs in over 65 countries.”

— Jimmy Carter

124. “We can choose to alleviate suffering. We can choose to work together for peace. We can make these changes – and we must.”

— Jimmy Carter

125. “But love must be aggressively translated into simple justice.”

— Jimmy Carter

126. “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

127. “Aggression unopposed becomes a contagious disease.”

— Jimmy Carter

128. “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

129. “I would describe fundamentalism as, first of all, a movement led almost invariably by authoritarian males who consider themselves to be superior to others and who have an overwhelming commitment to subjugate women and to dominate their fellow believers.”

— Jimmy Carter

130. “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

131. “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

132. “Because I know about the Holy Land, I’ve taught lessons about the Holy Land all my life, and – but you can’t bring peace to Israel without giving the Palestinian also peace. And Lebanon and Jordan and Syria as well.”

— Jimmy Carter

133. “Somebody said to me, ‘But the Beatles were anti-materialistic.’ That’s a huge myth. John and I literally used to sit down and say, ‘Now, let’s write a swimming pool.’ Paul McCartney I have often wanted to drown my troubles, but I can’t get my wife to go swimming.”

— Jimmy Carter

134. “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

135. “Republicans are men of narrow vision, who are afraid of the future.”

— Jimmy Carter

136. “The drug culture has shaped at least one major change since the Sixties; It became the basis for overloading our prisons.”

— Jimmy Carter

137. “I can’t deny I’m a better ex-president than I was a president.”

— Jimmy Carter

138. “Thoughtful criticism and close scrutiny of all government officials by the press and the public are an important part of our democratic society.”

— Jimmy Carter

139. “Testing oneself is best when done alone.”

— Jimmy Carter

140. “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

141. “My decision to register women confirms what is already obvious throughout our society-that women are now providing all types of skills in every profession. The military should be no exception.”

— Jimmy Carter

142. “America has no functioning democracy at this moment.”

— Jimmy Carter

143. “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

144. “We have no desire to be the world’s policeman. But America does want to be the world’s peacemaker.”

— Jimmy Carter

145. “America has always been a country of innovation and dynamism, entrepreneurship. And I think that one of the things that has made our country great too is its heterogeneous population where people come here from all over the world.”

— Jimmy Carter

146. “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

147. “There was never any question about the morality of hunting, but neither was there any acceptance of killing for the sake of a trophy.”

— Jimmy Carter

148. “It would be almost politically suicidal for members of Congress to espouse a balanced position between Israel and Palestine, to suggest that Israel comply with international law or to speak in defense of justice or human rights for Palestinians. If they did so, they couldn’t be reelected.”

— Jimmy Carter

149. “All I want is the same thing you want. To have a nation with a government that is as good and honest and decent and competent and compassionate and as filled with love as are the American people.”

— Jimmy Carter

150. “I don’t laugh at people any more when they say they’ve seen UFOs. I’ve seen one myself!”

— Jimmy Carter