Death wasn’t part of God’s original plan for humanity, and the Bible calls death an enemy – the last enemy to be destroyed.

One thing that I find very unmotivating is the kind of Plan B argument: when Earth gets destroyed, you want to be somewhere else. That doesn’t work for me. We have sent robotic probes now to every place in the solar system, and this is the best one.

To what greater inspiration and counsel can we turn than to the imperishable truth to be found in this treasure house, the Bible?

One has to pay dearly for immortality; one has to die several times while one is still alive.

Music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend.

Men are convinced of your arguments, your sincerity, and the seriousness of your efforts only by your death.

Sleep is the interest we have to pay on the capital which is called in at death; and the higher the rate of interest and the more regularly it is paid, the further the date of redemption is postponed.

I’m spending a year dead for tax reasons.

When I look upon seamen, men of science and philosophers, man is the wisest of all beings; when I look upon priests and prophets nothing is as contemptible as man.

There is but one law for all, namely that law which governs all law, the law of our Creator, the law of humanity, justice, equity – the law of nature and of nations.

The Bible is the cradle wherein Christ is laid.

Once spirit was God, then it became man, and now it is even becoming mob.

It seems sensible to me that we should look to the medical profession, that over the centuries has helped us to live longer and healthier lives, to help us die peacefully among our loved ones in our own home without a long stay in God’s waiting room.

I have never changed my message. I preach the Bible, and I preach it with authority.

Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.

Every man’s life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.

There’s no tragedy in life like the death of a child. Things never get back to the way they were.

It’s not that I’m afraid to die. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

A lot of psychological principles and even medical principles, you see them coming around to what the Bible said hundreds of years ago: a merry heart is good like a medicine.

Man is unable to see himself entirely unrelated to mankind, neither is he able to see mankind unrelated to life, nor life unrelated to the universe.

We are born, so to speak, twice over; born into existence, and born into life; born a human being, and born a man.

The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor.

As long as your body is healthy and under control and death is distant, try to save your soul; when death is immanent what can you do?

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.

Experience teaches us that it is much easier to prevent an enemy from posting themselves than it is to dislodge them after they have got possession.

And every human being is precious.

We are the most amazing creatures that this world has ever produced, but we seem to also have this herd mentality; we seem to be the most stupid, also.

Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much we surround it with rights and respect, it has no personal being. It is part of the earth man walks on. It is not man.

History isn’t just the story of bad people doing bad things. It’s quite as much a story of people trying to do good things. But somehow, something goes wrong.

The art of living well and the art of dying well are one.

Of all the men that have run for president in the twentieth century, only George McGovern truly understood what a monument America could be to the human race.

Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty.

The Bible illustrated by Dore occupied many of my hours – and I think probably gave me many nightmares.

With a tree, all the growth takes place at the growing tips. Humanity is exactly the same. All the growth takes place in the growing tip: among that one percent of the population. It’s made up of pioneers, the beginners. That’s where the action is.

There are worse things in life than death. Have you ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman?

A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world.

Foolish men imagine that because judgment for an evil thing is delayed, there is no justice; but only accident here below. Judgment for an evil thing is many times delayed some day or two, some century or two, but it is sure as life, it is sure as death.

To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.

Death most resembles a prophet who is without honor in his own land or a poet who is a stranger among his people.

Religion can be the enemy of God. It’s often what happens when God, like Elvis, has left the building.

The people who were honored in the Bible were the false prophets. It was the ones we call the prophets who were jailed and driven into the desert.

How happy had it been for me had I been slain in the battle. It had been far more noble to have died the victim of the enemy than fall a sacrifice to the rage of my friends.

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.

What pity is it That we can die, but once to serve our country.

Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.

Death surrenders us totally to God: it makes us enter into him; we must, in return, surrender ourselves to death with absolute love and self-abandonment since, when death comes, all we can do is to surrender ourselves completely to the domination and guidance of God.

I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.

Until he extends his circle of compassion to include all living things, man will not himself find peace.

There will be no lasting peace either in the heart of individuals or in social customs until death is outlawed.

Everybody loves you when you’re six foot in the ground.

Death will be a great relief. No more interviews.

I don’t claim to be knowledgeable about theology. Most of my knowledge comes out of my experience and the lessons in the Bible. Every Sunday I’m home I teach 45 minutes and we boiled them down to one page for the new book, ‚Through the Year with Jimmy Carter.‘

Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.

There is no lonelier man in death, except the suicide, than that man who has lived many years with a good wife and then outlived her. If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it.

We all die, we all get sick, we all feel hunger and lust and pain, and therefore human life is consistent from one generation to the other. We all – most of us, anyway – want connections with other people and spend our lives looking for them.

Me only have one ambition, y’know. I only have one thing I really like to see happen. I like to see mankind live together – black, white, Chinese, everyone – that’s all.

If there was an observer on Mars, they would probably be amazed that we have survived this long.

Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love.

I think Bible principles are principles for life.

I have no faith in human perfectability. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active – not more happy – nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.

Death is not the worst that can happen to men.