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Jimmy Carter’s words on peace, human rights, faith and public service came from speeches, books and later advocacy—not from one official list of life lessons. Here are ten documented quotations, with their occasions or sources so their original meaning stays in view.
Note: The number in the originally requested title is not an official or definitive Carter collection. The source material available for this article verifies the ten quotations below; adding more without reliable text and attribution would risk misquoting him.
Peace and human rights
1. Human rights and America
“America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense, it’s the other way around. Human rights invented America.”
— Jimmy Carter, Farewell Address to the Nation, January 14, 1981. Listed by The Carter Center’s “In His Own Words”. Carter was speaking about the principles behind the country, not offering a claim that the United States had always lived up to them.
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2. The cost of war
“War may 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, Nobel Peace Prize lecture, December 10, 2002. The passage appears in The Carter Center’s quotation collection and the Associated Press collection of notable Carter quotes. Its force comes from Carter’s argument about the human consequences of war and the work of building peace.
3. Peace as security and freedom
“Peace is more than the absence of war. There is an inner peace that comes from personal security and personal freedom.”
— Jimmy Carter, Carter Center News, Spring 2003, as identified by The Carter Center. The thought connects peace not only to relations between nations but also to people’s safety and liberty.
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“It is the powerful and secure on whom rests the fate of those who are weak and vulnerable.”
— Jimmy Carter, 1991 State of Human Rights Address, December 7, 1991. The full address transcript gives the setting for this appeal to those with power to protect people at risk.
Faith and perseverance
5. Faith as practice
“To me, faith is not just a noun, but also a verb.”
— Jimmy Carter, Living Faith (1996), attributed by The Carter Center. The distinction suggests that faith is expressed through action as well as belief.
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6. A long campaign against disease
“I’m still determined to outlive the last guinea worm.”
— Jimmy Carter, 2010, referring to The Carter Center’s work to eradicate guinea worm disease, according to the Associated Press. It is a wry expression of persistence tied to a specific public-health effort.
Public service and democracy
7. The citizen’s role
“In our democracy, the only title higher and more powerful than that of president is the title of citizen.”
— Jimmy Carter, op-ed, December 8, 2016, as listed by The Carter Center. The line places democratic responsibility with the public, not solely with elected leaders.
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“A President may sense and proclaim that new spirit, but only a people can provide it.”
— Jimmy Carter, inaugural address, January 1977, as reproduced by the Associated Press. The sentence distinguishes a president’s ability to describe national aspirations from the public’s role in making them real.
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9. The growing divide between rich and poor
“The greatest challenge we face is how to reduce the growing disparity between the rich and poor people on earth.”
— Jimmy Carter, speech in Taiwan, March 1999, according to The Carter Center. The quotation frames inequality as a global challenge.
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10. Principles through changing times
“We must adjust to changing times and still hold to unchanging principles.”
— A saying Carter attributed to his high school teacher, Miss Julia Coleman, in his inaugural address of January 20, 1977, as recorded by The Carter Center. The thought is Coleman’s as Carter reports it; it should not be credited to Carter as its original author.
Where to read more of Carter’s own words
The Carter Center’s “In His Own Words” page labels quotations by speech, book or statement. For longer reading, the quotations above point to Living Faith and the 1991 human-rights address. The Associated Press collection also attributes quotations to Carter’s books Why Not the Best? (1975), A Call to Action (2014) and A Full Life (2015).
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