I share Alfred Nobel's conviction that war is the greatest of all human disasters. Infectious disease runs a good second.
If you could have a gigantic billboard anywhere, what would it say and why?
Question
What is something you were told by a parent, teacher, or mentor that you still repeat to yourself?
Time & hindsight
Question
If you could edit your past, what would you change?
Failure & regret
Question
What would you like to be remembered for?
Death & what remains
Question
What are you still hoping to finish?
Death & what remains
Question
What is the best advice you have ever received?
Time & hindsight
Question
Are you afraid of death?
Death & what remains
War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children.
Oslo City Hall, The Nobel Foundation, 10 December 2002 source ↗
Others on this question
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Peter Doherty
Veterinary surgeon and immunologist; Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine, 1996
Recorded
Laureate-written autobiography for Les Prix Nobel, Nobel Prize Outreach, 1 December 1996
source ↗
Jacinda Ardern
Prime Minister of New Zealand, 2017–2023; Leader of the Labour Party 2017–2023
We are the richer for our difference, and poorer for our division. Through genuine debate and dialogue, through rebuilding trust in information and one another, through empathy – let us reclaim the space in between.
Recorded
Tercentenary Theatre, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard Magazine, 26 May 2022
source ↗
Marcus Rashford
England international footballer
We know there are over 380,000 children across the UK today that have never owned a book, children that are in vulnerable environments. That has to change. My books are, and always will be, for every child, even if I have to deliver them myself. We will reach them.
Recorded
Statement on the launch of the Marcus Rashford Book Club, Sky Sports, 16 November 2020
source ↗
Eleanor Roosevelt
First Lady of the United States 1933–1945; United States Delegate to the United Nations General Assembly 1945–1952; Chair of the UN Commission on Human Rights 1946–1951
If silence seems to give approval, then remaining silent is cowardly.
Recorded
'If You Ask Me' column, Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project, The George Washington University, September 1944
source ↗
More from Jimmy Carter
View profile →I thought often during my years in the White House of an admonition that we received in our small school in Plains, Georgia, from a beloved teacher, Miss Julia Coleman. She often said: "We must adjust to changing times and still hold to unchanging principles."
I wish I sent one more helicopter to get the hostages and we would have rescued then and I - I would have been re-elected, but that may have - and that may have interfered with the foundation of the Carter Center. And if I had to choose between four more years and the Carter Center, I think I would choose the Carter Center.
Recorded
News conference at the Carter Center, Atlanta, as transcribed by CNN, 20 August 2015
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Well, the best thing I ever did was marrying Rosalynn. That's the pinnacle of my life. And we've had 69 years together. Still together. And so that's the best thing that happened to me. But I think getting involved in politics and going up, you know, as a state senator, then governor, and then president of the United States is, obviously a glorious event. So - and we have a growing family. We have 22 grandchildren and great-grandchildren, 12 grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren now and they're coming every year. So - so we have a good, harmonious family.
Recorded
News conference at the Carter Center, Atlanta, as transcribed by CNN, 20 August 2015
source ↗
As far as the Carter Center's concerned, I would like to see guinea worm completely eradicated before -- before I die. I'd like for the last guinea worm to die before I do. ... I think right now, we have 11 cases. We started out with 3.6 million cases. And I think we have two cases in South Sudan and one case in Ethiopia and one case in Mali and seven cases in Chad. That's all the guinea worms in the world, and we know where all of them are. So obviously, that would be my top priority.
Recorded
Maria Saporta, News conference at the Carter Center, Atlanta, as transcribed by CNN, 20 August 2015
source ↗
And my sister, whose name is Ruth Stapleton, was a famous evangelist. She wrote four or five books, and she would give lectures to 50,000 people at a time. She and I had a long walk in the woods on my farm, and she said, “Jimmy, quite often, when you have a blow to your pride and a horrible defeat, you can either give up, or you can look on it as a way that God opens to you to do different and even better things.”
At first I - I felt that it was confined to my liver and that they had - the operation had completely removed it. And so I felt quite relieved. And then that same afternoon we had an MRI of my head and neck and it showed up that it was already in four places in my brain. So I would say that night and the next day, until I came back up to Emory, I just thought I had a few weeks left. But I was surprisingly at ease. You know, I've had a wonderful life. I've had thousands of friends and I've had an exciting and adventurous and gratifying existence. So I was surprisingly at ease, much more so than my wife was.
Recorded
News conference at the Carter Center, Atlanta, as transcribed by CNN, 20 August 2015
source ↗
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