Jimmy Carter
252 quotes
Biography
"We should live our lives as though Christ was coming this afternoon."
"I believe that anyone can be successful in life, regardless of natural talent or the environment within which we live. This is not based on measuring success by human competitiveness for wealth, possessions, influence, and fame, but adhering to God's standards of truth, justice, humility, service, compassion, forgiveness, and love."
"Failure is a reality; we all fail at times, and it's painful when we do. But it's better to fail while striving for something wonderful, challenging, adventurous, and uncertain than to say, "I don't want to try because I may not succeed completely."
"At the end of a long campaign, I believe I know the people of our state as well as anyone. Based on this knowledge of Georgians North and South, Rural and Urban, liberal and conservative, I say to you quite frankly that the time for racial discrimination is over."
"We should live our lives as though Christ were coming this afternoon."
"I have nothing against a community that is made up of people who are Polish, or who are Czechoslovakians, or who are French Canadians or who are blacks trying to maintain the ethnic purity of their neighborhoods. This is a natural inclination. … Government should not break up a neighborhood on a numerical basis. As soon as the Government does, the white folks flee."
"I've looked on many women with lust. I've committed adultery in my heart many times. This is something that God recognizes I will do — and I have done it — and God forgives me for it.""
"Sometimes we try to justify this unsavory business on the cynical ground that by rationing out the means of violence we can somehow control the world’s violence. The fact is that we cannot have it both ways. Can we be both the world’s leading champion of peace and the world’s leading supplier of the weapons of war?"
"Any system of economics is bankrupt if it sees either value or virtue in unemployment. We simply cannot check inflation by keeping people out of work.."
"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."
"The destruction was mutual. We went to Vietnam without any desire to capture territory or impose American will on other people. I don't feel that we ought to apologize or castigate ourselves or to assume the status of culpability."
"Penalties against drug use should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself. Nowhere is this more clear than in the laws against the possession of marijuana in private for personal use."
"We cast this message into the cosmos. It is likely to survive a billion years into our future, when our civilization is profoundly altered and the surface of the Earth may be vastly changed. Of the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, some — perhaps many – may have inhabited planets and spacefaring civilizations. If one such civilization intercepts Voyager and can understand these recorded contents, here is our message:"
"Ours was the first society openly to define itself in terms of both spirituality and of human liberty. It is that unique self-definition which has given us an exceptional appeal, but it also imposes on us a special obligation, to take on those moral duties which, when assumed, seem invariably to be in our own best interests."
"Let us learn together and laugh together and work together and pray together, confident that in the end we will triumph together in the right."
"We have already found a high degree of personal liberty, and we are now struggling to enhance equality of opportunity. Our commitment to human rights must be absolute, our laws fair, our natural beauty preserved; the powerful must not persecute the weak, and human dignity must be enhanced."
"To be true to ourselves, we must be true to others. We will not behave in foreign places so as to violate our rules and standards here at home, for we know that the trust which our Nation earns is essential to our strength."
"I think it's very significant to point out that several Presidents and several different Congresses, that many private contributors have been involved in the evolution of this tremendous new health care center. I'm proud of it. It has been a subject of some criticism because of its cost. But I think we have to remember that this is the center of our government, and that what does occur here in 1977 and in the year 2000 can very well set a standard of care and love for children that will permeate the consciousness of doctors and nurses and parents, teachers and social workers throughout our country and, perhaps, even throughout the world. I grew up in a home in a rural area of Georgia, but my mother was a registered nurse. And I and the other children in that country community had good health care, not just from her but because there was a heavy emphasis on the prevention of disease, on inoculations, and on a constant relationship with a large number of medical doctors who lived there then."
"We've let those standards of prevention emphasis deteriorate over the last few decades. Recently, Joe Califano, who is the new head of the Health, Education, and Welfare Department, was talking about this. And we decided to increase the emphasis placed on the health care for children. In the past, the Federal Government has paid 50 percent of the cost of identifying young children who need health care, and we had very slight response. So, we decided in this next budget to increase that to 75 percent, hoping that in this way, within the school environment, within the outpatient clinics, within the county health centers, that we could identify children who perhaps have not had the good fortune that many of your children and my child has had, and might have potential problems observed and corrected before they reach their formative years of life."
"A great deal of thought has gone into the design of this hospital to try to predict what the future might bold in energy conservation, health care, and in the use of brief periods of stay within a hospital environment for those who are quite ill. Another new or innovative change that has been made in the design is that there is a special place in every instance for the parent of a child to stay here with that child while the severe illness has not been corrected. So, adjacent to each child's bed there is a place for the parent to stay. This hospital, I believe, is associated with George Washington University and its medical center. And it's close enough so that Federal officials, as well, can both teach, try new ideas, and learn. We, I think, can receive rich benefits from this center. And I believe that we can set a standard for the whole country."
"I know how much I love my own children. Just a few minutes ago, Amy and I were out in the front yard of the White House designing a treehouse that's going to be built for Amy, and it is one of those many instances that I have to be close to her. And I know that when she does get ill in the future, I want her to have good health care. But I'm just as interested in a child who lives in the oldest and most dilapidated apartment house in the District of Columbia. And I'm also interested in the children that live in Atlanta, Georgia, Detroit, or who live in other parts of our country. So, I'm here to represent the Government, which quite often makes mistakes, but which I hope always retains a heart, attuned to loving care for those who are able to care for themselves, yes, but for primarily those whose care would be neglected if those who do occupy major political positions in the Congress and in the White House didn't care for everyone. This is a good day for us. And I hope that everyone who serves in this hospital or who comes here for treatment or whose family uses this facility will be blessed by it and will be inspired with a sense of compassion and understanding and brotherhood and love, to keep illness away from our children and to correct those who are afflicted with disease."
"I want to congratulate those who have come before me who had the foresight to understand the need for this facility. And I think that every family who does live in that dilapidated apartment dwelling can breathe a little easier knowing that if their children are sick that poverty or despair will not prevent their child from getting just as good medical treatment as the little daughter of the President of the United States. That's what's good about a system of government such as ours. We've got a long way to go in the field of health care, but this is a major step forward. And I'm very proud of what has been done and look forward with a great deal of determination to earn, as President, working with all of you, the medal that has been struck and presented to me and Rosalynn. It will go in the White House museum or in the Archives. And I hope it will be a reminder in generations to come of the concern that many of you have had long before I was elected President at these tiny but precious emblems of concern in the greatest country on Earth--the children that we care so much about."
"Last night I was in Clinton, Massachusetts, at a Town Hall meeting where people of that small town decide their political and economic future. Tonight I speak to a similar meeting where people representing nations all over the world come here to decide their political and economic future. I am proud to be with you tonight in this house where the shared hopes of the world can find a voice. I have come here to express my own support and the continuing support of my country for the ideals of the United Nations. We are proud that for the 32 years since its creation, the United Nations has met on American soil. And we share with you the commitments of freedom, self-government, human dignity, mutual toleration, and the peaceful resolution of disputes--which the founding principles of the United Nations and also Secretary General Kurt Waldheim so well represent. No one nation by itself can build a world which reflects all these fine values. But the United States, my own country, has a reservoir of strength--economic strength, which we are willing to share; military strength, which we hope never to use again; and the strength of ideals, which are determined fully to maintain the backbone of our own foreign policy."
"It is now 8 weeks since I became President. I have brought to office a firm commitment to a more open foreign policy. And I believe that the American people expect me to speak frankly about the policies that we intend to pursue, and it is in that spirit that I speak to you tonight about our own hopes for the future. I see a hopeful world, a world dominated by increasing demands for basic freedoms, for fundamental rights, for higher standards of human existence. We are eager to take part in the shaping of that world. But in seeking such a better world, we are not blind to the reality of disagreement, nor to the persisting dangers that confront us all. Every headline reminds us of bitter divisions, of national hostilities, of territorial conflicts, of ideological competition. In the Middle East, peace is a quarter of a century overdue. A gathering racial conflict threatens southern Africa; new tensions are rising in the Horn of Africa. Disputes in the eastern Mediterranean remain to be resolved. Perhaps even more ominous is the staggering arms race. The Soviet Union and the United States have accumulated thousands of nuclear weapons. Our two nations now have five times more missile warheads today than we had just 8 years ago. But we are not five times more secure. On the contrary, the arms race has only increased the risk of conflict."
"We can only improve this world if we are realistic about its complexities. The disagreements that we face are deeply rooted, and they often raise difficult philosophical as well as territorial issues. They will not be solved easily. They will not be solved quickly. The arms race is now embedded in the very fabric of international affairs and can only be contained with the greatest difficulty. Poverty and inequality are of such monumental scope that it will take decades of deliberate and determined effort even to improve the situation substantially. I stress these dangers and these difficulties because I want all of us to dedicate ourselves to a prolonged and persistent effort designed first to maintain peace and to reduce the arms race; second, to build a better and a more cooperative international economic system; and third, to work with potential adversaries as well as our close friends to advance the cause of human rights. In seeking these goals, I realize that the United States cannot solve the problems of the world. We can sometimes help others resolve their differences, but we cannot do so by imposing our own particular solutions."