His Very Best Quotes

“Carter felt that human rights are impossible to secure in a society wracked by violence. He wasn’t prioritizing peace over human rights so much as saying the former was a prerequisite for the latter. He believed “war is the greatest violation of human rights” and vowed to continue talking to war criminals because they were the ones with the power to stop people from killing each other.”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

“But Carter was also an early believer that Western music could help hollow out the Soviet system. In 1977 the White House helped the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band become the first rock-and-roll band to play on Russian soil, part of an infusion of Western values that Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev later said “taught the young there was another life.” Anatoly Dobrynin, who served as the Soviet ambassador in Washington through five presidencies, conceded in his memoirs that Carter’s human rights policies “played a significant role” in the Soviet Union loosening its grip at home and in Eastern Europe.”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

“During Carter’s visit to Seoul in 1979, President Park angered him by delivering what Carter called in his journal “an abusive harangue” about how even that tiny reduction in forces—just 0.5 percent of the six hundred thousand South Korean troops already defending the country—would jeopardize his national security. Carter ignored Park’s rudeness because he had what he considered a higher purpose: saving his soul. On the last day of his visit, after official business was completed, he talked to the South Korean president about becoming a Christian. Like Gierek in Poland, Park never fully embraced Christianity, but Carter’s unusual decision to raise the matter strengthened religious freedom in South Korea.”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

“Carter also showed respect by becoming the first American president to visit sub-Saharan Africa while in office: a state visit to Nigeria in 1978. He invited more African heads of state to the White House in his first year than any of his predecessors had in four.”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

“When Carter first talked to Andrew Young in late 1976 about leaving Congress to become his ambassador to the United Nations, Young resisted. He told the president-elect he would better serve Carter’s interests by staying in the House of Representatives, where Carter knew almost no one. Young suggested that Congresswoman Barbara Jordan should be his UN ambassador. “But she didn’t march with King, and you did,” Carter told him. The president-elect felt that the credibility of his human rights campaign abroad depended on its connection to the American civil rights movement. On the day Young was sworn in, Carter handed him a note that said: “Ask African leaders what we can do together.” Young believed the first word, Ask, spoke volumes about the transformation under way.”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

“The radical shift in the role of the vice president would be one of Carter’s enduring legacies—and the most significant strengthening of the American constitutional system in the second half of the twentieth century.”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

“It’s time for America to move and to speak, not with boasting and belligerence, but with a quiet strength—to depend in world affairs not merely on the size of an arsenal but on the nobility of ideas—and to govern at home not by confusion and crisis but with grace and imagination and common sense.”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

“Nowhere in the Constitution of the United States or the Declaration of Independence or the Bill of Rights or the Emancipation Proclamation, the Old Testament or the New Testament, do you find the words ‘economy’ or ‘efficiency.’ Not that these two words are unimportant. But you discover other words like honesty, integrity, fairness, liberty, justice, love.… Words which describe what a government of human beings ought to be.”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

“We told the truth. We obeyed the law. We kept the peace.”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

“To him, that wasn't tough but, rather, a sign of insecurity, and he viewed the killer instinct that he lacked as a bogus prerequisite for good leadership.”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

“As they resumed discussions that evening, Carter was still angry. He told Begin he "won't beat around the bush." He would not have invited him to Camp David in the first place if he had known he wanted to stay in the occupied territories forever.

"What you want to do is make the West Bank part of Israel." Carter said coldly. "It looks like subterfuge." He wondered what had happened to the full autonomy Begin had pledged earlier to the Palestinians on the West Bank.

Begin's view was that autonomy was not sovereignty; and given the West Bank's very close proximity to Israel, his country needed to maintain ultimate control over all security questions. This would be the essential Israeli position for decades to come.”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

“By coincidence the near-breakdown of the talks occurred on the same day that the news media was allowed its only visit. Reporters had been kept several miles away from Camp David and fed largely useless scraps of information by spokesmen. Now they bussed in for a mere forty-five minutes and seated in bleachers to witness an evening ceremony featuring the US Marine band.

Even from a distance, the press corps could tell that all three leaders looked glum, and the talks were not going well. Beyond that, reporters got nothing. After the press buses were loaded to leave, Jerry Rafshoon noticed that Barbara Walters was not aboard. He found her hiding in a stall in the ladies room. She'd hoped in vain to stay behind and find out what was happening.”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

“After leaving office, Carter often argued that the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, written by Canadian and French diplomats at the United Nations and popularized by Elanor Roosevelt, was akin to the Declaration of Independence and US Constitution in its importance. He believed that the values in it were descended from the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew, where Jesus teaches people how they should treat one another.”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

“He proposed and signed into law the 1978 Ethics in Government Act and the 1978 Inspector General Act which brought new ethical standards, new transparency requirements, the first whistleblower protections, the first authorized special prosecutors and, critically, the first formal offices of Inspectors General starting in 12 agencies. The purpose, in Carter's words was to "root out corruption, fraud, waste, mismanagement in the most effective and enthusiastic fashion.”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

“Even as it failed, Carter's early welfare reform bill planted important seeds. For years Republicans stressed 'workfare,' requiring low-income people to work in exchange for welfare or food stamps. While Democrats believed that connecting welfare to work was demeaning. Carter's work incentives offered an innovative middle position, a way of using tax credits to make work pay. This third way proved to be a transformative idea in American social policy.”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

“Like a Catholic sinner in the confessional, he salved his private liberal conscience and protected his public conservative image at the same time.”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

“One day Carter looked up something he had been wondering about on Wikipedia. He found that in the 242 years since the Declaration of Independence, the United States had enjoyed only 16 years of full peace. Four of the years without any hostilities came when he was president. That meant, he concluded, that "our country has been the foremost warlike nation on earth." Worse, many of the wars were motivated by domestic politics. "Most presidents look at war as a way of going from beleaguered civilian administrator to being commander in chief," he said.”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

“Rick Hertzberg noted that Americans admire ruthlessness in the waging of war but not peace. Carter was "a Patton of peace," Hertzberg said, referring to General George S. Patton, whose single-minded devotion to achieving his objectives during World War II was remembered longer than the harsh criticism he received from many contemporaries for improper behavior.”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

“Long-distance runners are a breed of their own,” Clark remembered. “They are generally thin, somewhat introverted, friendly as a group, dedicated to self-improvement, [and] intelligent.”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

“And looking tough was certainly good for Carter politically. But if that had been his only motive - and if he had been a different kind of president - he might have sent troops somewhere (as six of his predecessors had) or bombed some country (as all of his successors have). That would have ultimately been more popular than canceling US participation in the Olympics and slamming the farm belt and nascent tech sector with embargoes. In the end, Carter managed to show resolve without imperiling American lives - just as he intended.”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

“Even some of Carter's supporters felt he would have seemed stronger had he taken symbolically tough action early on, as President Reagan did in invading the tiny island of Grenada in 1983. But that wasn't how Carter rolled. He made concessions to the politics of national security but never felt the need to prove his toughness, especially if such gestures might cost American lives. To him, that wasn't tough but, rather, a sign of insecurity, and he viewed the killer instinct that he lacked as a bogus prerequisite for good leadership.”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

“I want a government that is as good, and honest, and decent, and truthful, and fair, and competent, and compassionate, and as filled with love as are the American people.” Love”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

“Just 150 yards from the Carters’ modest house on Woodland Drive lies a ten-acre field that has been in the family for generations. In 2019 Carter arranged for the installation of 3,500 solar panels, which would soon provide more than half the power for the people of Plains.”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

“Carter’s personal experience in 1980 impressed Ortega, and he left office peacefully. President Bush was thrilled with Carter’s role. “This sent a powerful message throughout the region and to Moscow,” he recalled. Later, Carter resolved devilishly complex disputes between the Sandinistas and those whose property they had seized during their revolution. In”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

“Carter felt that pounding the table was pointless. Karin Ryan noticed that her boss had a quality of looking people in the eye and making them think he was their friend. “He can tell you to go to hell, and you think you’ll enjoy the trip,” Andrew Young recalled. “He has the ability to reach for the best in that person—an almost magical power to inspire someone by telling them, ‘You can make history.”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

“James Laney, the president of Emory University, liked to say that Carter was “the only president who ever used the White House as a stepping-stone.”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

“It was the best of Carter, a profoundly caring man, loving his brother through stress, as honest as a political human knows how to be,” wrote Time’s Hugh Sidey, usually a stout Carter critic, in a piece representative of the consensus in Washington.”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

“When Rosalynn grew despondent about the headlines, Jimmy told her to read from John 14:1 (“Let not your heart be troubled”), and her spirits lifted before she embarked on a diplomatic mission to Peru.”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

“and if he had been a different kind of president—he might have sent troops somewhere (as six of his predecessors had) or bombed some country (as all of his successors have). That would have ultimately been more popular than canceling US participation in the Olympics and slamming the farm belt and nascent tech sector with embargoes. In the end, Carter managed to show resolve without imperiling American lives—just as he intended.”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

“As a boy, Jimmy sent a nickel every week to Baptist missionaries building hospitals and schools in China.”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life