Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter has died at age 100. Here are some of his quotes:
* "I can't deny I'm a better ex-president than I was a president."
- 2005 interview with reporters
* "The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation.
"The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America. – a 1979 televised address on what was wrong with America; it became known as Carter's "malaise speech"
* "America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense, it is the other way round. Human rights invented America."
- Carter's Jan. 14, 1981, presidential farewell address
* "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."
- a 1976 interview with Playboy magazine
* "A simple and a proper function of government is just to make it easy for us to do good and difficult for us to do wrong."
- Carter's speech accepting the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976
* "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."
- Carter's 2002 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech
* "I think that under [President Donald Trump the government is worse than it has been before. This is the first time I remember when the truth is ignored, allies are deliberately aggravated, China, Europe, Mexico and Canada are hurt economically and have to hurt us in response, Americans see the future worse than the present, and immigrants are treated cruelly."
- Carter in a 2018 interview with Salon
© 2025 Thomson/Reuters. All rights reserved.