Top 300 Jimmy Carter Quotes (2025 Update)
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201. “God is not my personal valet. God does not build a protective fence around my life, keep me from trouble, fulfill my personal desires, or guarantee my success. However, through prayer God offers me comfort, reassurance, satisfaction, courage, hope, and peace.”

— Jimmy Carter

202. “If one of our fellow citizens can be executed with so much doubt surrounding his guilt, then the death penalty system in our country is unjust and outdated.”

— Jimmy Carter

203. “If any agreement between two nations is to last, it must serve the best interests of both nations.”

— Jimmy Carter

204. “I began to expand my personal service in the church, and to search more diligently for a closer relationship with God among my different business, professional and political interests.”

— Jimmy Carter

205. “Elvis was a symbol of the country’s vitality, rebelliousness, and good humor.”

— Jimmy Carter

206. “One of the most serious problems that our country has inherited an unwillingness to talk to anyone who disagrees with us or who won’t accept, before a discussion, all the premises that we demand.”

— Jimmy Carter

207. “A fundamentalist can’t bring himself or herself to negotiate with people who disagree with them because the negotiating process itself is an indication of implied equality.”

— Jimmy Carter

208. “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

209. “One of the turning points of my life was when I got my first bait-casting outfit.”

— Jimmy Carter

210. “Some major churches overemphasize the importance of preaching as a means to increase membership and fail to reach out with compassion to their neighbors in need.”

— Jimmy Carter

211. “Trust is very much a part of our democracy.”

— Jimmy Carter

212. “Communicating our questions, hopes, and fears in prayer makes them-even to ourselves-more open and clear...”

— Jimmy Carter

213. “I don’t think that Israel has any legal or moral justification for their massive bombing of the entire nation of Lebanon.”

— Jimmy Carter

214. “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

215. “The life of every human being on earth can depend on the experience, judgment, and vigilance of the person in the Oval Office.”

— Jimmy Carter

216. “At the Carter Center we work with victims of oppression, and we give support to human rights heroes.”

— Jimmy Carter

217. “The importation and sale of marijuana is condemned and punished as a serious crime, but we accept as legitimate the manufacture and sale of an infinitely more addictive and deadly drug: the nicotine in cigarettes that cost the lives of 390,000 American citizens last year.”

— Jimmy Carter

218. “There needs to be a similar degree of flexibility and generosity in the recognition of the humaneness and worth of people who we generally consider as adversaries.”

— Jimmy Carter

219. “The Bible and studying the Bible has been an important part of my life.”

— Jimmy Carter

220. “I wish I had known when I was in the White House what I know now about the Third World.”

— Jimmy Carter

221. “Every day in the United States, seventeen children are killed by gunfire. That’s about 6,000 children each year who are killed by guns, as compared, for example, with about 3,000 a year who died at the height of the polio epidemic of the 1950s. We rose up as a society to fight against polio. Why do we not act more forcefully to halt today’s even greater scourge?”

— Jimmy Carter

222. “You have given me a great responsibility: to stay close to you, to be worthy of you and to exemplify what you are.”

— Jimmy Carter

223. “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

224. “The measure of a society is found in how they treat their weakest and most helpless citizens. As Americans, we are blessed with circumstances that protect our human rights and our religious freedom, but for many people around the world, deprivation and persecution have become a way of life.”

— Jimmy Carter

225. “I am a nuclear physicist by training and a deeply committed Christian. I don’t have any doubt in my own mind about God who created the entire universe. But I don’t adhere to passages that so and so was created 4,000 years before Christ, and things of that kind.”

— Jimmy Carter

226. “Ours was the first nation to be founded on the idea that all are created equal and all deserve equal treatment under the law. Despite our missteps and shortcomings, these ideals still inspire hope among the oppressed and give us pride in being Americans.”

— Jimmy Carter

227. “You can already download any of the religious texts onto electronic mechanisms like a Kindle. But I think many people prefer to hold a book in their hands.”

— Jimmy Carter

228. “I think a good husband has to depend on having a good wife.”

— Jimmy Carter

229. “The United States is squandering international prestige and goodwill and intensifying global anti-American terrorism by unofficially condoning or abetting the Israeli confiscation and colonization of Palestinian territories.”

— Jimmy Carter

230. “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

231. “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

232. “I thought a lot about our Nation and what I should do as President. And Sunday night before last, I made a speech about two problems of our countryenergy and malaise.”

— Jimmy Carter

233. “People in the United States, including me, are naturally inclined to support Israel. I’m an evangelical Christian who teaches the Bible every Sunday at my church. I teach half the Old Testament and half the New Testament. We Americans identify the Hebrews, the Israelites, with ourselves.”

— Jimmy Carter

234. “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.”

— Jimmy Carter

235. “The first step in providing economic equality for women is to ensure a stable economy in which every person who wants to work can work.”

— Jimmy Carter

236. “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

237. “And so I say to you and to others around the world, whether they wish us well or ill – do not underestimate us Americans. We lack neither strength nor wisdom.”

— Jimmy Carter

238. “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

239. “This afternoon, I’ve arranged for this ceremony to be illuminated by solar power.”

— Jimmy Carter

240. “The reduction of nuclear arsenals and the removal of the threat of worldwide nuclear destruction is a measure, in my judgment, ofthe power and strength of a great nation.”

— Jimmy Carter

241. “Standing alone among great democratic nations in imposing the death penalty is another moral decision that Americansare being forced to confront.”

— Jimmy Carter

242. “Energy will be the immediate test of our ability to unite this Nation, and it can also be the standard around which we rally. On the battlefield of energy we can win for our Nation a new confidence, and we can seize control again of our common destiny.”

— Jimmy Carter

243. “For me personally and for most other Americans, this commitment to peace and diplomacy does not imply a blind or total pacifism. There are times when war is justified, and for many centuries the moral criteria for violence have been carefully delineated.”

— Jimmy Carter

244. “One of the surprising things that Brezhnev said when we were in our talks, was – when I proposed that we make these changes in nuclear weaponry, he said, “God will never forgive us if we don’t succeed.” And, you know, coming from the leader of an atheistic communist country, this surprised everyone.”

— Jimmy Carter

245. “This is the first national administration we’ve ever seen where the housewife couldn’t afford to buy groceries and the farmer couldn’t afford to grow them.”

— Jimmy Carter

246. “Sadat was a great and good man, and his most bitter and dangerous enemies were people who were obsessed with hatred for his peaceful goals.”

— Jimmy Carter

247. “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

248. “I can’t think of a man more worthy of the presidency then my good friend Sam Nunn.”

— Jimmy Carter

249. “I don’t claim to be knowledgeable about theology. Most of my knowledge comes out of my experience and the lessons in the Bible. Every Sunday I’m home I teach 45 minutes and we boiled them down to one page for the new book, ‘Through the Year with Jimmy Carter.’”

— Jimmy Carter

250. “Governance should be designed as an equalizer. Democrats are more inclined towards working families and those who are struggling for a better life.”

— Jimmy Carter