Jimmy Carter Quotes

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?

Spirit is like the wind, in that we can't see it but can see its effects, which are profound.

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. This tremendous new Children's Hospital is designed to do several things. One is to treat those children who have severe health problems, particularly cardiac patients at a young age, below 18 or so. Ninety percent of those kinds of patients in the whole metropolitan area are likely to be treated here. And one-third of all the children in the metropolitan area of Washington will be treated here.

Just this past week, I publicly endorsed a concept, for the first time, of human rights for the District of Columbia. Thank you; you're welcome. The endorsement by the President, of course, is not the final step. The Congress must act, and the people have to ratify a change in the United States Constitution. As I say, we still have a long way to go. We join together in matters that affect all human beings--a search for peace in the world, a reduction in armaments, a channeling of scarce financial and human resources to give people a better life, a life with education possible, better health care, more human freedom, the rule by the black majorities in the African nations. And there has been a change among the developing nations of the world in their attitude toward us. And I would say that the crucial factors that have been involved are represented very well by the three men who stand behind me--Parren Mitchell, Alex Haley, and Andrew Young--and many others in this audience who have come before them and who have marched with them and will join with us in the future in a spirit of brotherhood to make sure that the great achievements that we've seen in our own country can be enhanced and that they can be made available to the needy and downtrodden people throughout the world. Thank you very much. I love you all. Thank you.

It's very likely Hillary Clinton will still prevail in the Democratic Party. Bernie Sanders, though, has had a remarkable showing, particularly among young people.

Well, as I spelled out in my last fireside chat to the American people, there 'are three basic elements that I would require: One is fairness in dealing with consumers; the second one is meeting the goals of both conservation and production in the energy area; and, third, an energy proposal that won't bankrupt this Nation nor seriously disturb the future budgets of our country. That's a fairly broad base, and I think it's an adequate parameter within which the conferees can work. But if any of those principles are violated, I would not sign the bill.

Today, our dominant international challenge is to restore the greatness of America, based on telling the truth, a commitment to peace, and respect for civil liberties at home and basic human rights around the world. Truth is the foundation of our global leadership, but our credibility has been shattered and we are left increasingly isolated and vulnerable in a hostile world. Without truth, without trust, America cannot flourish. Trust is at the very heart of our democracy, the sacred covenant between a president and the people. When that trust is violated, the bonds that hold our republic together begin to weaken.

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.

We're concerned about young people's health. We propose an $18.9 million program to immunize 5 1/2 million poor children from preventable diseases over the next 30 months, and we'll raise the number of poor children screened for medical purposes from less than 2 million last year to 9.8 million before I go out of office. I said during the campaign that the tax system was a disgrace, that it was most unfair to people with low and average incomes. We've been working now for 6 months on a tax proposal that will be simpler and fairer and will reduce the burden on the average American. But in the meantime, we have already gotten Congress to agree--the bill has been signed, it's been passed into law--to reduce taxes $4 billion with the primary emphasis on the low- and middle-income families, which means that a family that makes about $10,000 a year on a permanent basis would have a 30-percent reduction in their income tax payments. That's already been done. Walter Mondale, my Vice President, worked for years unsuccessfully, 8 years, to try to get a $100-million increase in the Title I programs for a better education for poor people, poor children. We have already proposed, and the Congress has already agreed, to increase the Title I program more than $350 million.

I want to welcome all of you to the White House. Some of you have been here before. I think you've had a chance to meet with some of our staff this morning. And I hope that the day will be fruitful for you. One of the most important things to me as President is to have a means by which I can understand the problems and the questions that arise throughout the country-sometimes removed from Washington itself---to get a different perspective and also, of course, during my news conferences, that have been held and will always be held, I hope, twice a month, to receive questions from the Washington press corps. The number of issues that confront me are very voluminous. I'd just like to outline a few of them for you in preparation for your questions.

I believe that you would agree that when John Kennedy was President and when Lyndon Johnson was President, that the community action agencies had a life of their own and helped to make decisions about government programs. In the last 8 years--and I won't call the names of the Presidents who were in the White House--[laughter]--those community action agencies were put into a very secondary position and lost the influence and the decisionmaking authority that they formerly had under the leadership of people like Joe Califano in HEW, who helped to put into effect many of the Johnson programs 10 years ago. And under the leadership of Pat Harris and Juanita Kreps and Grace Olivarez and others, we're trying to bring back the life of those community action groups. I think that it's impossible, no matter how intelligent or how dedicated a Washington official might be--it's impossible for them to know what the needs are in your community as well as you know them. That's the reason that I brought Grace Olivarez with me today, because that's her responsibility, working with the people that I've just named, to make sure that in the future we have a reviving of the community group influence and authority, whether it's a Hungarian American community or a Spanish-speaking community or a predominantly black community in Youngstown where a steel mill has shut down or a community of older people in Florida who have moved down there on a very low income; that doesn't matter. I want that particular community to let me know, through the Government agencies, how we can best address your problems. I want to thank you for that good question. I think Grace would agree that we're making a move in the right direction. And I think meeting with you today will help to expedite what we want to do. I think that everybody in the audience would agree that we've had a superb panel. They've asked very good questions, brought forward very good ideas for us. And I and all my staff members who are here, the different Federal agencies represented-and almost all of them are represented-the national news media that will repeat what you have said to the world at large tonight will benefit greatly from the sound, good judgment that you have provided and the personal experience that make your words carry even more authority than the words of a President. You know what you're talking about. I'm trying to learn what you're talking about.

This Voyager spacecraft was constructed by the United States of America. We are a community of 240 million human beings among the more than 4 billion who inhabit the planet Earth. We human beings are still divided into nation states, but these states are rapidly becoming a single global civilization.

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:

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. We hope someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination, and our good will in a vast and awesome universe

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.

We cannot change the history of the past.

I've been talking a lot about conservation, lately, and efficiency in automobiles. When I got off the plane, I was greeted and rode in one of your finest products--a very large, very black Cadillac limousine. [Laughter] So, I've enjoyed so far my visit, and I'm looking forward to the rest of it and to speak to you. Later, I'll be on a 90-minute call-in television show, and then I'm going to visit some of the farmlands around Fresno. It's no accident that I've chosen the UAW convention to make this speech and to make this appearance. Your union was born in struggle, and you've won many victories. But you've never retreated into complacency or narrow selfishness. The UAW is still fighting, because this union has always understood that it cannot stand alone. And above every other trade union I know in the world, you've always seen that your membership and your leadership were part of a larger society and a larger world. Very few institutions anywhere have been so fortunate as to have the kind of superb leadership that has always been a mark of the UAW. For 31 years, this union has been led by men whose vision and sense of responsibility extended far beyond the walls of Solidarity House--men who have demanded decency and a better life not just for the UAW membership but for all the people. The next president of the UAW has big shoes to fill. I won't predict who's going to win your election tomorrow, although I noticed that Doug Fraser doesn't look too worried.