Jimmy Carter quotes

Jimmy Carter is an American politician who served as the 39th president of the United States. Known for his emphasis on human rights and diplomatic efforts, he played a significant role in international peace negotiations. He is widely respected for his humanitarian work after leaving office. Here are 258 of his quotes:

We should live our lives as though Christ were coming this afternoon.

Jimmy Carter

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

Jimmy Carter

I thought then, and I think now, that the invasion of Iraq was unnecessary and unjust. And I think the premises on which it was launched were false.

Jimmy Carter

America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense human rights invented America.

Jimmy Carter

I've looked on a lot of women with lust. I've committed adultery in my heart many times.

Jimmy Carter

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

Jimmy Carter

Like music and art, love of nature is a common language that can transcend political or social boundaries.

Jimmy Carter

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

Jimmy Carter

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

Jimmy Carter

A strong nation, like a strong person, can afford to be gentle, firm, thoughtful, and restrained. It can afford to extend a helping hand to others. It's a weak nation, like a weak person, that must behave with bluster and boasting and rashness and other signs of insecurity.

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've become now an oligarchy instead of a democracy. And I think that's been the worst damage to the basic moral and ethical standards of the American political system that I've ever seen in my life.

Jimmy Carter

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

Jimmy Carter

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

Jimmy Carter

America does not at the moment have a functioning democracy.

Jimmy Carter

We must adjust to changing times and still hold to unchanging principles.

Jimmy Carter

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

Jimmy Carter

If you're totally illiterate and living on one dollar a day, the benefits of globalization never come to you.

Jimmy Carter

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

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

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

Jimmy Carter