Jimmy Carter
In 2002, Jimmy Carter received the Nobel Peace Prize, a recognition that placed a capstone on decades of public life that had taken him from the farmlands of Georgia to the highest office in the United States and, ultimately, to a sustained career as a diplomat, humanitarian, and writer.
Born on October 1, 1924, in Plains, Georgia, Carter came of age in a small Southern town and would carry that rural background throughout his life, maintaining his identity as a farmer even as his political ambitions grew. He entered elected office as a member of the Democratic Party, serving in the Georgia State Senate from 1963 to 1967. That legislative experience positioned him for a larger stage, and he went on to serve as the 76th governor of Georgia from 1971 to 1975. His tenure in Atlanta set the foundation for a national campaign, and in 1977 he was inaugurated as the 39th president of the United States, an office he held until 1981.
After leaving the presidency, Carter continued working across several fields. His occupations over the course of his life encompassed politics, farming, diplomacy, humanitarian work, and writing. That last pursuit brought its own form of public recognition: he received a Grammy Award for Best Audio Book, Narration and Storytelling Recording, a distinction that reflected the breadth of his activities beyond government. The Presidential Medal of Freedom and the United Nations Prize in the Field of Human Rights were also among the honors he accumulated across his career.
Carter died on December 29, 2024, having reached the age of 100. His Nobel Peace Prize, awarded by the Norwegian Nobel Committee, remains the most formally prominent of the recognitions he received, citing work that extended well past his years in the White House. The United Nations Prize in the Field of Human Rights stands alongside it as a measure of how his post-presidential life was assessed by international institutions attentive to the work of diplomats and humanitarians operating on a global scale.
Quotes by Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter's insights on:
Everyone has a right to peaceful coexistence, the basic personal freedoms, the alleviation of suffering, and the opportunity to lead a productive life.
Because we are now running out of gas and oil, we must prepare quickly for a third change, to strict conservation and to the use of coal and permanent renewable energy sources, like solar power.
With massive arsenals still on hair-trigger alert, a global holocaust is just as possible now, through mistakes or misjudgments, as it was during the depths of the Cold War.
It's not necessary to fear the prospect of failure but to be determined not to fail.
Because we are now running out of gas and oil, we must prepare quickly for a third change, to strict conservation and to the use of... permanent renewable energy sources, like solar power.
Globalization, as defined by rich people like us, is a very nice thing you are talking about the Internet, you are talking about cell phones, you are talking about computers. This doesn't affect two-thirds of the people of the world.
Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself; and where they are, they should be changed.
America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense, it is the other way round. Human rights invented America.
Human rights is the soul of our foreign policy because human rights is the very soul of our sense of nationhood.