Jimmy Carter Quotes

The primary objective of dictators is to stay in office, and we help them achieve this goal by punishing their already suffering subjects and letting the oppressors claim to be saviors. When nonmilitary pressure on a government is considered necessary, economic sanctions should be focused on travel, foreign bank accounts, and other special privileges of government officials who make decisions, not on destroying the economy that determines the living conditions of oppressed people.

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.

There are more people now, more children, going without health care ... A medical team surveying twenty-five hundred poor children in the District found that eight out of ten had untreated medical or dental problems. The infant mortality rate in the District, already the highest in the nation and higher than that of many Third World nations, actually rose ... and prenatal care was considered an important causative factor. ~Lenore Horowitz, quoted by Jimmy Carter

The rhetoric and demands from all sides may be harsh, but there are obvious areas of agreement that can provide a basis for progress. Private discussions with Arab leaders are much more promising than their public statements would lead one to believe, and in Israel there is a strong and persistent constituency for moderation that is too little heard or appreciated in neighboring states or in America.

Bible in Life Walking With God GENESIS 1:27–31 Genesis describes the unique nature of our relationship with God our Creator. In John 4:24, Jesus says that “God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.” Christ was completely human and also completely divine. Humans, created in God’s image, are spiritual creatures. We have the potential for a complete spiritual relationship with God through

We had made the exciting discovery that our lives do not need to be limited to past experiences. The future could be challenging and fulfilling as well.

Since I was a young boy the thrust of my prayers — at least when I was trying to make a good impression on God — has always been that I not fail to use fully and effectively the one life I have on earth. I have always enjoyed difficult challenges. At the same time I have faced the realization that it is not easy to take a chance or confront the prospect of failure and embarrassment. But my feeling is that if we refuse to try something that might fail, we lack faith either in ourselves or in our causes and goals.

She drove down from North Carolina to see me, and reminded me of scriptural lessons that tragedies and disappointments should be a source of increased patience, strength, wisdom, and a commitment to our Christian life. I rejected her premises at first, but Ruth finally convinced me to relegate my political and business ambitions to a secondary position of importance for a while and to assume some challenging religious commitments.

"For the first time, we recognized a medium that takes our ordinary, everyday objects like bowls, baskets, and quilts and elevates them to art forms that rival painting and sculpture in their impact.
(From the forward to "Crafts in America: Celebrating Two Centuries of Artists and Objects.

I have tried, at least most of the time, to set high objectives, to accept failures and disappointments with relative equanimity, to acknowledge and try to correct my mistakes and weaknesses, and then to set different and sometimes higher goals for the future.

Great American power and responsibility are not unprecedented and have been used with restraint and great benefit in the past. We have not assumed that super strength guarantees super wisdom, and we have consistently reached out to the international community to ensure that our own power and influence are tempered by the best common judgment.

And I'm asking you for your good and for your nation's security to take no unnecessary trips, to use carpools or public transportation whenever you can, to park your car one extra day per week, to obey the speed limit, and to set your thermostats to save fuel. Every act of energy conservation like this is more than just common sense — I tell you it is an act of patriotism.

The groomed trail was narrow, and there was about an inch of ice on both sides. My right ski went under the ice sheet, and I fell over on my face. My forehead, cheeks, lips, and chin were slashed. We radioed Dr. Lukash and learned that he was treating Superintendent McFadden, who had had a spill and cut his face even more severely. I rode back to Camp David on a snowmobile, bleeding badly. Dr. Lukash treated all the superficial cuts on my face, and we skied the next day. The big problem was that I was scheduled to make a speech at Georgia Tech on Tuesday. We called Lillian Brown, who was a superb artist with cosmetics, and she applied several layers of greasepaint and powder and accompanied me to Atlanta. I got through the ordeal without embarrassment, but I had to be careful to avoid any broad smiles, which caused the thick makeup to crack.

But we do have something we never had before: we have the added pressure of time. We can no longer wait around for the ideal opportunity. If we have not achieved our early dreams, we must either find new ones or see what we can salvage from the old. If we have accomplished what we set out to do in our youth, then we need not weep like Alexander the Great that we have no more worlds to conquer. There is clearly much left to be done, and whatever else we are going to do, we had better get on with it.

As our mountain friend says, 'It takes about forty-five or fifty years before we realize that we can go to bed at about ten o'clock and not miss anything much.