Jimmy Carter Quotes

Human Rights

You either respect people's liberties, or you don't.

Every American ought to have the right to be treated as he would wish to be treated, as one would wish his children to be treated. This is not the case.

Justice, like liberty and coercion, is a concept which, for the sake of clarity, ought to be confined to the deliberate treatment of men by other men.

Tolerance and human rights require each other.

If you have respect for people's rights, you will have peace.

He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.

The rights of the lowliest criminal are not his alone. They belong to us all.

I would simply not compromise on the fundamental rights of people.

Justice is never anything in itself, but in the dealings of men with one another in any place whatever and at any time. It is a kind of compact not to harm or be harmed.

The universe did not invent justice. Man did. Unfortunately, man must reside in the universe.

I don't want tea, I want justice!

Mankind censure injustice fearing that they may be the victims of it, and not because they shrink from committing it.

Freedom, justice and equality are three principles of life are with us before the fast, they should be with us during the fast and they should be with us after the fast.

No man is above the law, and no man is below it.

I recognize that in some cases it's more important to have freedom and justice than to have peace.

Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public

There are unprecedented numbers of movements for human rights and freedoms. But the dominant worldviews in academia, like materialism and naturalism, deny the reality of freedom, reducing humans to robots. So where does the concept of human rights come from?

Every man is free to do that which he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man.

It is hardly a moral act to encourage others patiently to accept injustice which he himself does not endure.

We declare our right on this earth...to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary.

His calls for justice were lost at the mercy of the wind and human indifference.

The idea of "human rights," for example - sometimes it bothers me. Not in itself, but because the concept of human rights has replaced the much grander idea of justice.

Our collective freedom... depends on our ability to defend the rights of others.

I wish my countrymen to consider that whatever the human law may be, neither an individual nor a nation can ever commit the leastact of injustice against the obscurest individual without having to pay the penalty for it. A government which deliberately enacts injustice, and persists in it, will at length even become the laughing-stock of the world.