Jimmy Carter Quotes

I avoid going through places where there's too much poverty.

The economy is not governed with the bottom half in mind.

Never forget that there are rich people in poor countries and poor people in rich countries.

…In certain parts of Latin America, the seizure of the vast majority of the wealth by an oligarchy of owners bereft of social consciousness, the practical absence or the shortcomings of a rule of law, military dictators making a mockery of elementary human rights, the corruption of certain powerful officials, the savage practices of some foreign capital interests constitute factors which nourish a passion for revolt among those who thus consider themselves the powerless victims of a new colonialism in the technological, financial, monetary, or economic order.

This society cannot go forward, the way we have been going forward, where the gap between the rich and the poor keeps growing.

What does peace mean in a world in which the combined wealth of the world's 587 billionaires exceeds the combined gross domestic product of the world's 135 poorest countries?

With industrialization the gulf between the employed and the employer is growing wider; social contrasts are becoming sharper—as liveried carriages appear, so do barefoot children.

… perceptions of poverty have gone up because there’s been rising inequality.

No society is healthy when the gap between the rich and the poor is growing.

The burning issue of our time is the growing inequality in income and wealth in our country.

There is growing inequality. The families of the all-powerful Ministers are getting richer. The poor and hard-working Belizeans are getting poorer.

For all the obsession in Washington and in college faculty lounges over income inequality, why isn't there more outrage over government policies that exacerbate the problem? There are hundreds of programs that make the poor poorer and increase poverty in America.

Until we fix the deep-rooted problems of economic inequality, we cannot expect young people to experience the best childhood and adolescence.

Why do some people have to go barefoot so that others can drive luxury cars? Why are some people able to live only 35 years in order that others can live 70 years? Why do some people have to be miserably poor in order that others can be extravagantly rich? I speak for all the children in the world who don't even have a piece of bread.

The state of inequality between individuals and between nations not only still exists; it is increasing. It still happens that side by side with those who are wealthy and living in plenty there exist those who are living in want, suffering misery and often actually dying of hunger; and their number reaches tens, even hundreds of millions.

A nation will not survive morally or economically when so few have so much and so many have so little.

Disparity is Australia's worst social problem. Thousands of lives are slowly being crushed, while billions are wasted on thousands of little initiatives trying to 'close the gap.'

Economic chasm between people is something that is of interest to me. And something that I used to write about even as a child. It's something I've revisited a few times in my writings.

Greater inequality in Europe has made people less happy.

What I worry about is the lack of understanding in society around the world that there is a divide in the world between those who have and those who do not.

'Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream' is an intentionally angry film. How could it not be when the chance of an infant dying is five times greater on the Bronx Park Avenue than on Manhattan's Park Avenue just across the Harlem River?

We need to start talking about inequality again; we need to start talking about the inequities and unfairnesses and the injustices of an excessively divided society, divided by wealth, by opportunity, by outcome, by assets and so forth.

It's morally wrong, and economically self-defeating, that so much wealth flows upwards towards the richest of Americans, while millions work full time but still can't provide for their families.

I think the collision between the First and Third world is going to become more and more conspicuous. It's the big cliff that we've all got to climb.

If you go on TV and say there's no other country in the world where you can be born poor and become rich, you get a huge megaphone. If you tell the truth, which is that most of the studies show actually the United States is worse than anybody except Britain in upward mobility, there is no audience for you.