Jimmy Carter Quotes
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I officially designated every US ambassador on earth to be my personal human rights representative, and to have the embassy be a haven for people who suffered from abuse by their own government.
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Giving people equal access to enjoying the benefits of America is the biggest problem that we're not making any progress in resolving.
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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.
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The United States...has a warm and a unique relationship of friendship with Israel that is morally right. It is compatible with our deepest religious convictions, and it is right in terms of America's own strategic interests. We are committed to Israel's security, prosperity, and future as a land that has so much to offer the world.
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The election of Barack Obama was a very wonderful step forward for America, which has unfortunately been tainted by the ugly reaction of some right wing activist who are doing their best to cast aspersions on his character and to question his religion and citizenship.
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They were more than hostile. In the first place, I was a south Georgian and I was looked upon as a fiscal conservative, and the Atlanta newspapers quite erroneously, because they didn't know anything about me or my background here in Plains, decided that I was also a racial conservative.
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In a nuclear age, each of us is threatened when peace is not secured everywhere.
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Earlier in my life I thought the things that mattered were the things that you could see, like your car, your house, your wealth, your property, your office. But as I've grown older I've become convinced that the things that matter most are the things that you can't see -- the love you share with others, your inner purpose, your comfort with who you are.
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Trust is very much a part of our democracy.
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But love must be aggressively translated into simple justice.
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Quite often, the people who do leave their own nation and come to an unknown destination, like the United States, are inherently adventurous, so we've had that adventurous spirit that has embedded itself collectively in the American consciousness.
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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.
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Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself...
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My opinion of the Russians has changed most drastically in the last week than even (sic) the two-and-a-half years before that. It's only now dawning upon the world the magnitude of the action that the Soviets undertook in invading Afghanistan.
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Because we are free we can never be indifferent to the fate of freedom elsewhere. Our moral sense dictates a clearcut preference for these societies which share with us an abiding respect for individual human rights. We do not seek to intimidate, but it is clear that a world which others can dominate with impunity would be inhospitable to decency and a threat to the well-being of all people.
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Nobody knows when you make an effort or when you plant a seed if it will bear fruit or not.
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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.
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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.
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The Bible and studying the Bible has been an important part of my life.
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I would say the biggest handicap we have right now is some nutcases in our country that don't believe in global warming. I think they are going to change their position because of pressure from individuals, because the evidence of the ravages of global warming is already there.
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If you have a task to perform and are vitally interested in it, excited and challenged by it, and then you will exert maximum energy. But in the excitement, the pain of fatigue dissipates, and the exuberance of what you hope to achieve overcomes the weariness.
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America has no functioning democracy at this moment.
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I believe there is complete equality between men and women.
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My mother's influence to take on new challenges and do what I though was right even though sometimes the consequences politically speaking were not good. My mother was vivacious, she was full of life, she got up every morning looking forward to the day, trying to figure out what she could do that was innovative and unprecedented and maybe controversial.