At the Carter Center we work with victims of oppression, and we give support to human rights heroes.

The measure of a society is found in how they treat their weakest and most helpless citizens.

What are the things that you can't see that are important? I would say justice, truth, humility, service, compassion, love...They're the guiding lights of a life.

America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense human rights invented America.

We cannot be both the world's leading champion of peace and the world's leading supplier of the weapons of war.

All I want is the same thing you want. To have a nation with a government that is as good and honest and decent and competent and compassionate and as filled with love as are the American people.

We become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic. Different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams.

The test of a government is not how popular it is with the powerful and privileged few but how honestly and fairly it deals with the many who must depend on it.

America has no functioning democracy at this moment.

If you fear making anyone mad, then you ultimately probe for the lowest common denominator of human achievement.

It is difficult for the common good to prevail against the intense concentration of those who have a special interest, especially if the decisions are made behind locked doors.

[My father] loved me tenderly and shyly from a distance, and later on took a naive pride in seeing my name in print.

Let a man in a garret burn with enough intensity and he will set fire to the world.

The world is continuous, but the mind is discrete.

I've learned 2 things about tv. It's always easier with vodka & SOME OF THE BEST SINGERS ARE FROM THE PHILIPPINES

Ordinary [people] avoid troubles. Extraordinary [people] turn them into advantage.

The man who thinks he can do without the world is indeed mistaken; but the man who thinks the world cannot do without him is mistaken even worse.

Lowly, unpurposeful and random as they may appear, sidewalk contacts are the small change from which a city's wealth of public life may grow.

I am still into the people I listened to growing up, so I completely remember what is like to be a fan, I haven't changed.

Many different substances, as distinct to the practiced eye as stone and wood, go to the making of a novel, and it is necessary to see them for what they are.

The people don't run the system; the people are victims of the system. The people choose the leaders thinking that they will help them. But when they turn around, there is no help.