I want to stress again that human rights are not peripheral to the foreign policy of the United States. Our pursuit of human rights is part of a broad effort to use our great power and our tremendous influence in the service of creating a better world, a world in which human beings can live in peace, in freedom, and with their basic needs adequately met.
Jimmy CarterWe have a tendency to condemn people who are different from us, to define their sins as paramount and our own sinfulness as being insignificant.
Jimmy CarterEvery act of energy conservation... is more than just common sense: I tell you it is an act of patriotism.
Jimmy CarterIt is good to realize that if love and peace can prevail on earth, and if we can teach our children to honor nature's gifts, the joys and beauties of the outdoors will be here forever.
Jimmy CarterStanding alone among great democratic nations in imposing the death penalty is another moral decision that Americansare being forced to confront.
Jimmy CarterThere's no way to have a peace agreement unless the mediator or negotiator looks at both sides from an equal basis.
Jimmy CarterI come out of the environment of the Deep South, where I had seen the millstone of racial discrimination weighting down my people, both the black people and the white people; and I had seen the enormous progress that we were able to make after we removed the legal restraints of a two-class society, with the whites superior and blacks inferior. So I was very convinced before I became President that basic human rights, equality of opportunity, the end of abuse by governments of their people, was a basic principle on which the United States should be an acknowledged champion.
Jimmy Carter