James Earl Carter Jr. was an American politician and humanitarian who served as the 39th President of the United States from 1977 to 1981. A member of the Democratic Party, Carter served as the 76th governor of Georgia from 1971 to 1975 and in the Georgia State Senate from 1963 to 1967. He was the longest-lived president in U.S. history and the first to reach the age of 100. Born and raised in Plains, Georgia, Jimmy Carter graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1946 and joined the United States Navy’s submarine service.
He married Rosalynn Smith, and they worked closely together throughout their lives. Carter returned home after his military service and revived his family’s peanut-growing business. Opposing racial segregation, he supported the growing civil rights movement and became an activist within the Democratic Party. After serving in the Georgia State Senate and then as governor of Georgia, Carter ran for president in 1976. Initially a dark horse candidate not well known outside Georgia, he secured the Democratic nomination and selected Walter Mondale as his running mate.
They narrowly defeated the Republican Party’s ticket of President Gerald Ford and Senator Bob Dole. On his second day in office, Carter pardoned all Vietnam War draft evaders. He created a national energy policy that included conservation, price control, and new technology. Carter successfully pursued the Camp David Accords, the Panama Canal Treaties, and the second round of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks. He also confronted stagflation. He signed into law bills that established the United States Department of Energy and the United States Department of Education.
The last two years of Carter’s presidency were marked by the Three Mile Island accident, the establishment of diplomatic relations with China, the Nicaraguan Revolution, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the Iranian Revolution, which resulted in the Iran hostage crisis and the 1979 oil crisis. In response to the Soviet invasion, he escalated the Cold War by ending détente, imposing a grain embargo against the Soviets, enunciating the Carter Doctrine, and leading the multinational boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow.
Carter and Mondale sought reelection in 1980, and were renominated by the Democratic Party after Carter defeated Senator Ted Kennedy in the party’s primaries. They lost by a landslide to the Republican ticket of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. Polls of historians and political scientists have ranked Carter’s presidency below average while many generally view his post-presidency – the longest in U.S. history – more favorably.
After Carter’s presidential term ended, he established the Carter Center to promote and expand human rights, leading to his receiving a Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his work in relation to it. He traveled extensively to conduct peace negotiations, monitor elections, and further the eradication of infectious diseases. Carter was a key figure in the nonprofit housing organization Habitat for Humanity. He also wrote numerous books, ranging from political memoirs to poetry, while continuing to comment on global affairs; two of his books are about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Some of the best quotes from Jimmy Carter are listed below.
- “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
- “Aggression unopposed becomes a contagious disease.” – Jimmy Carter
- “All my playmates on the farm were black, and later, when I started school in Plains, it was all white. But I was always eager to get back home to my friends in Archery.” – Jimmy Carter
- “America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense human rights invented America.” – Jimmy Carter
- “At the Carter Center we work with victims of oppression, and we give support to human rights heroes.” – Jimmy Carter
- “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
- “Billy Graham is one of my great lifetime heroes. I think he epitomizes the essence of what a Christian leader should be. I have participated in some of his crusades a couple of times in Atlanta. I’ve seen the profound impact he’s had on me personally, and on other people who were not Christians and accepted Christ as Savior.” – Jimmy Carter
- “Ever since Israel has been a nation the United States has provided the leadership. Every president down to the ages has done this in a fairly balanced way, including George Bush senior, Gerald Ford, and others including myself and Bill Clinton.” – Jimmy Carter
- “For this generation, ours, life is nuclear survival, liberty is human rights, the pursuit of happiness is a planet whose resources are devoted to the physical and spiritual nourishment of its inhabitants.” – Jimmy Carter
- “Globalization, as defined by rich people like us, is a very nice thing… you are talking about the Internet, you are talking about cell phones, you are talking about computers. This doesn’t affect two-thirds of the people of the world.” – Jimmy Carter
- “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
- “Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. People have the right to expect that these wants will be provided for by this wisdom.” – Jimmy Carter
- “Human rights are the soul of our foreign policy, because human rights are the very soul of our sense of nationhood.” – Jimmy Carter
- “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
- “I am confident that when the facts and policies have been examined, when the record of performances have been reviewed, Barack Obama and Joe Biden will once again be elected to lead our beloved country to a better future.” – Jimmy Carter
- “I believe there is complete equality between men and women. And I believe those passages in the New Testament, not by Jesus, but by Paul, that say women should not adorn themselves, they should always wear hats or color their hair in church – things like that – I think they are signs of the times and should not apply to modern-day life.” – Jimmy Carter
- “I believed what my father taught me about the separation of church and state, so when I was President, I never invited Billy Graham to have services in the White House because I didn’t think that was appropriate. He was injured a little bit, until I explained it to him.” – Jimmy Carter
- “I can’t really criticize the Tea Party people, because I came into the White House pretty much on the same basis that they have become popular. That is dissatisfaction with the way things are going in Washington and disillusionment and discouragement about the government.” – Jimmy Carter
- “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
- “I don’t think that the total creation took place in six days as we now measure time. If we can confirm, say, the Big Bang theory, that doesn’t at all cause me to question my faith that God created the Big Bang.” – Jimmy Carter
- “I don’t think the Tea Party people are racist, except maybe a tiny portion of them. But there has been a deliberate effort – again, referring to Fox Broadcasting – to inject the race issue into it. They have actually called Obama a racist on television.” – Jimmy Carter
- “I don’t want to tell President Obama how to make a speech. He’s a much better speech maker than I am. But I think always to tell the truth in a sometimes-blatant way, even though it might be temporarily unpopular, is the best approach.” – Jimmy Carter
- “I feel that my role as a former president is probably superior to that of other presidents. Primarily because of the activism and the injection of working at the Carter Center, and in international affairs, and to some degree, domestic affairs, on energy conservation, on environment, and things of that kind.” – Jimmy Carter
- “I had just as much support from Republicans as I did Democrats when I ran for president. But I should have organized the Democratic Party to get me re-elected.” – Jimmy Carter
- “I had very good support from Democrats and Republicans all throughout my administration. I had a very high batting average. We added more jobs per year in my four years than any other president since the Second World War.” – Jimmy Carter
- “I hate to see complacency prevail in our lives when it’s so directly contrary to the teaching of Christ.” – Jimmy Carter
- “I have 22 grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and they keep me young.” – Jimmy Carter
- “I have been very interested and intrigued and congratulatory toward President Bush and his paintings.” – Jimmy Carter
- “I have often wanted to drown my troubles, but I can’t get my wife to go swimming.” – Jimmy Carter
- “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
- “I personally have always been in favor of people who are gay being permitted to marry legally – and I still feel that way.” – Jimmy Carter
- “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
- “I say to you quite frankly that the time for racial discrimination is over.” – Jimmy Carter
- “I separated from the Southern Baptists when they adopted the discriminatory attitude towards women, because I believe what Paul taught in Galatians that there is no distinction in God’s eyes between men and women, slaves and masters, Jews and non-Jews – everybody is created equally in the eyes of God.” – Jimmy Carter
- “I think all Americans believe in human rights. And health is an often-overlooked aspect of basic human rights. And it’s one that’s easily corrected. The reason I say that is that many of the diseases that we treat around the world, I knew when I was a child. My mother was a registered nurse. And they no longer exist in our country.” – Jimmy Carter
- “I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he’s African American.” – Jimmy Carter
- “I think I was identified as a failed president because I wasn’t re-elected.” – Jimmy Carter
- “I think politicians really go with the tide.” – Jimmy Carter
- “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
- “I think what’s going on in Guantanamo Bay and other places is a disgrace to the U.S.A. I wouldn’t say it’s the cause of terrorism, but it has given impetus and excuses to potential terrorists to lash out at our country and justify their despicable acts.” – Jimmy Carter
- “I think, in many people’s minds, the Confederate battle flag is not only a memorial to our ancestors, which is perfectly OK, but also a symbol of white superiority and an inclination for people to believe that even slavery would’ve been OK.” – 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
- “I was totally dominated and revered my father. I admired everything he did. He was a great sports person. He loved me. I was his only boy at that time, before my brother Billy came along.” – Jimmy Carter
- “I wish I had known when I was in the White House what I know now about the Third World.” – Jimmy Carter
- “If I go to Italy, I will certainly request to meet with Pope Francis, whom I admire very much.” – Jimmy Carter
- “If you fear making anyone mad, then you ultimately probe for the lowest common denominator of human achievement.” – Jimmy Carter
- “If you’re totally illiterate and living on one dollar a day, the benefits of globalization never come to you.” – Jimmy Carter
- “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
- “I’m a Southerner.” – Jimmy Carter
- “I’m an expert typist. I learned in high school. I would close my eyes and just type without worrying about mistakes. I tried to penetrate my heart, and as I let my thoughts drift, things bubbled up to the surface.” – Jimmy Carter
- “I’m going to stay active as long as I can politically, and with the Carter Center primarily, and if I’m able mentally and physically, will continue to be quite active.” – Jimmy Carter
- “I’m taking special treatments for the cancer in my brain and in my liver. Part of the liver was removed, and they did the treatment on four places in my brain with radiation. And now I’m taking a long-term medicine that stimulates my own immune system to fight against cancer.” – Jimmy Carter
- “In religious and in secular affairs, the more fervent beliefs attract followers. If you are a moderate in any respect – if you’re a moderate on abortion, if you’re a moderate on gun control, or if you’re a moderate in your religious faith – it doesn’t evolve into a crusade where you’re either right or wrong, good or bad, with us or against us.” – Jimmy Carter
- “In this outward and physical ceremony we attest once again to the inner and spiritual strength of our Nation. As my high school teacher, Miss Julia Coleman, used to say: ‘We must adjust to changing times and still hold to unchanging principles.’” – Jimmy Carter
- “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
- “It is good to realize that if love and peace can prevail on earth, and if we can teach our children to honor nature’s gifts, the joys and beauties of the outdoors will be here forever.” – Jimmy Carter
- “It’s not necessary to fear the prospect of failure but to be determined not to fail.” – Jimmy Carter
- “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
- “I’ve been writing poems since I was in the Navy – to Rosalynn. I found I could say things in poems that I never could in prose. Deeper, more personal things. I could write a poem about my mother that I could never tell my mother. Or feelings about being on a submarine that I would have been too embarrassed to share with fellow submariners.” – Jimmy Carter
- “I’ve just finished my 20th book this past year and I’m working on my 21st book about the Middle East right now that I’ll finish this year. And I get up early in the morning and when I get tired of the computer and tired of doing research, I walk 20 steps out to my woodshop and I either build furniture or paint paintings. I’m an artist too.” – Jimmy Carter
- “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
- “I’ve used the prestige and influence of having been a president of the United States as effectively as possible. And secondly, I’ve still been able to carry out my commitments to peace and human rights and environmental quality and freedom and democracy and so forth.” – Jimmy Carter
- “Jesus never said a word about homosexuality. In all of his teachings about multiple things – he never said that gay people should be condemned. I personally think it is very fine for gay people to be married in civil ceremonies.” – Jimmy Carter
- “Like music and art, love of nature is a common language that can transcend political or social boundaries.” – Jimmy Carter
- “My both my sisters died with pancreatic cancer. My brother died with pancreatic cancer. My daddy died of pancreatic cancer. My mother died with breast cancer.” – Jimmy Carter
- “My constant prayer, my number one foreign goal, is to bring peace to Israel. And in the process to Israel’s neighbors.” – Jimmy Carter
- “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
- “My favorite president, and the one I admired most, was Harry Truman.” – Jimmy Carter
- “My great-grandfather and his two brothers fought at Gettysburg. They were in artillery, and they survived the war, thank goodness. So, I revere what they did. I think their motivations were honorable when they undertook the war and participated in it along with other Southerners.” – Jimmy Carter
- “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
- “My position has always been, along with many other people, that any differences be resolved in a nonviolent way.” – Jimmy Carter
- “My understanding of racial discrimination as a child was highly distorted because the most prominent man in Archery was an African-American bishop. When he came home from up north, where he was in charge of A.M.E. churches in five states, it was front-page news. He was the most successful man in my life.” – Jimmy Carter
- “On balance, my life has been a constant stream of blessings rather than disappointments and failures and tragedies. I wish I had been re-elected. I think I could have kept our country at peace. I think I could have consolidated what we achieved at Camp David with a treaty between Israel and the Palestinians.” – Jimmy Carter
- “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
- “Republicans are men of narrow vision, who are afraid of the future.” – Jimmy Carter
- “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
- “Testing oneself is best when done alone.” – Jimmy Carter
- “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
- “The best way to enhance freedom in other lands is to demonstrate here that our democratic system is worthy of emulation.” – Jimmy Carter
- “The Carter Center has the only existing international taskforce on disease eradication. Which means a total elimination of a disease on the face of the Earth. In the history of the world, there’s only been one disease eradicated: smallpox. The second disease, I think, is gonna be guinea worm.” – Jimmy Carter
- “The experience of democracy is like the experience of life itself-always changing, infinite in its variety, sometimes turbulent and all the more valuable for having been tested by adversity.” – Jimmy Carter
- “The fact is that we would have had comprehensive health care now, had it not been for Ted Kennedy’s deliberately blocking the legislation that I proposed in 1978 or ’79.” – Jimmy Carter
- “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
- “There should be an honest attempt at the reconciliation of differences before resorting to combat.” – Jimmy Carter
- “There’s a common perception among college administrators that they should conceal the high level of sexual assaults that take place on their campuses because it would bring discredit to the university, bring them a bad name if it was publicized.” – Jimmy Carter
- “There’s always an element of self-delusion among people who believe they ought to be President. There’s an underestimation of your opponent and an overestimation of your own abilities. This is compatible with being rich and powerful, the idea that we were blessed by God because we deserve to be blessed.” – Jimmy Carter
- “There’s no doubt that the Christian right has gone to bed with the more conservative elements of the Republican Party. And there’s been a melding in their goals when it comes to the separation of church and state. I’ve always believed in the separation of church and state.” – Jimmy Carter
- “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
- “There’s no way now for you to get a Democratic or Republican nomination without being able to raise $200 or $300 million or more. I would not be inclined to do that, and I would not be capable of doing it.” – Jimmy Carter
- “To deal with individual human needs at the everyday level can be noble sometimes.” – Jimmy Carter
- “Too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption.” – Jimmy Carter
- “Unfortunately, after Sept. 11, there was an outburst in America of intense suffering and patriotism, and the Bush administration was very shrewd and effective in painting anyone who disagreed with the policies as unpatriotic or even traitorous.” – Jimmy Carter
- “Unless both sides win, no agreement can be permanent.” – Jimmy Carter
- “War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.” – Jimmy Carter
- “We become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic. Different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams.” – 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
- “We can’t equate democracy with Christianity because the largest democracy on earth is India, which is primarily Hindu. The third largest democracy is Indonesia, which is Islamic. Democracy and freedom are not dependent on Christian beliefs.” – Jimmy Carter
- “We have a tendency to condemn people who are different from us, to define their sins as paramount and our own sinfulness as being insignificant.” – Jimmy Carter
- “We must adjust to changing times and still hold to unchanging principles.” – Jimmy Carter
- “We must make it clear that a platform of ‘I hate gay men and women’ is not a way to become president of the United States.” – Jimmy Carter
- “We reached a high point in my opinion with the passage of the civil rights legislation and Martin Luther King’s success and the crusade of others. I think we kind of breathed a sigh of relief as if we had achieved the end of racial discrimination or white supremacy.” – Jimmy Carter
- “We should live our lives as though Christ were coming this afternoon.” – Jimmy Carter
- “We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.” – Jimmy Carter
- “Well, you know, I had been a peanut farmer. I had – you know who was the first president – Democratic president I ever met? Bill Clinton.” – Jimmy Carter
- “We’ve become, now, an oligarchy instead of a democracy. I think that’s been the worst damage to the basic moral and ethical standards to the American political system that I’ve ever seen in my life.” – Jimmy Carter
- “What has happened at Guantanamo Bay… does not represent the will of the American people. I’m embarrassed about it; I think it’s wrong. I think it does give terrorists an unwarranted excuse to use the despicable means to hurt innocent people.” – Jimmy Carter
- “Whatever starts in California unfortunately has an inclination to spread.” – Jimmy Carter
- “When I speak at my local church, which I try to do 35 to 40 times a year, I try in every lesson to take the Old Testament text or New Testament text and apply them to what is happening to me or how that applies to the audience that I’m teaching in a modern, fast-changing, technological world. I use headlines, interfaith and that sort of thing.” – Jimmy Carter
- “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
- “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
- “When I was president, I announced and I still maintain that I can live with Roe v. Wade. I did everything I possibly could as president under that ruling, which I don’t think ought to be changed, to minimize the need for abortions. I think every abortion is a result of a horrible series of errors on the part of people involved.” – Jimmy Carter
- “When we go to the Bible, we should keep in mind that the basic principles of the Bible are taught by God, but written down by human beings deprived of modern-day knowledge. So, there is some fallibility in the writings of the Bible. But the basic principles are applicable to my life and I don’t find any conflict among them.” – Jimmy Carter
- “When you single out any particular group of people for secondary citizenship status, that’s a violation of basic human rights.” – Jimmy Carter
- “You can do what you have to do, and sometimes you can do it even better than you think you can.” – Jimmy Carter
- “You cannot 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
- “You can’t 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
- “You just have to have a simple faith.” – Jimmy Carter
