We need an adult in the White House. When making life-or-death, war-or-peace decisions, a president can’t just pop off or lash out irrationally.

The man who can dominate a London dinner-table can dominate the world.

But even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked.

No party has a monopoly on wisdom. No democracy works without compromise. But when Governor Romney and his allies in Congress tell us we can somehow lower our deficit by spending trillions more on new tax breaks for the wealthy – well, you do the math. I refuse to go along with that. And as long as I’m President, I never will.

I think whether you’re having setbacks or not, the role of a leader is to always display a winning attitude.

Even people on the liberal side are starting to worry about going off a fiscal cliff.

I’m going to stay active as long as I can politically, and with the Carter Center primarily, and if I’m able mentally and physically, will continue to be quite active.

Taking care of children has nothing to do with politics. I think perhaps with time, instead of there being a politicization of humanitarian aid, there will be a humanization of politics.

If I went back to my 20-year-old self, what I would tell my 20-year-old self is, ‚You don’t know anything.‘ Because everyone, when they’re young, they think they know what’s going on in the world, and you don’t.

It’s OK to have your eggs in one basket as long as you control what happens to that basket.

Many years ago, I concluded that a few hair shirts were part of the mental wardrobe of every man. The president differs from other men in that he has a more extensive wardrobe.

The time to take counsel of your fears is before you make an important battle decision. That’s the time to listen to every fear you can imagine! When you have collected all the facts and fears and made your decision, turn off all your fears and go ahead!

When you’re around the kids, you feel like you act the most grown up just because you’re supposed to lead. I say things, like every other parent, that reminds you of your own parents. One thing I do know about being a parent, you understand why your father was in a bad mood a lot.

In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to another.

I call him free who is led solely by reason.

I’ve seen how the issues that come across a president’s desk are always the hard ones – the problems where no amount of data or numbers will get you to the right answer.

The attempt to combine wisdom and power has only rarely been successful and then only for a short while.

I claim that human mind or human society is not divided into watertight compartments called social, political and religious. All act and react upon one another.

The risk for me would be in not taking one – that’s the only thing that’s really risky for me.

I kept a very full diary of my relationship with Nixon, for some strange reason, until he became president.

Here in the West, people often don’t like listening to their leaders, even if they are right.

You know, you can only lead them from behind.

Do not ask for what you will wish you had not got.

Until the great mass of the people shall be filled with the sense of responsibility for each other’s welfare, social justice can never be attained.

I think I became more productive through not having children. I never really had the desire to have them. My husband didn’t want them either, so it worked out well.

When I graduated from law school in 1959, there wasn’t a single woman on any federal bench. It wouldn’t be a realistic ambition for a woman to want to become a federal judge. It wasn’t realistic until Jimmy Carter became our president.

My parents pretty much realized that I would do whatever I wanted, and that was it, really.

When you decide to get involved in a military operation in a place like Syria, you’ve got to be prepared, as we learned from Iraq and Afghanistan, to become the government, and I’m not sure any country, either the United States or I don’t hear of anyone else, who’s willing to take on that responsibility.

I’m sure I’ve changed my mind about something. Inevitably, when we grow up – as we get more experience and wiser. Well, I’ve changed my mind about some food that I didn’t like when I was young.

Actually, to be an effective person politically in this country, I think you have to be thirty or over, and also you have to be rich, well-placed, you have to be close to power. And I don’t think that young people, because they look young, can do much, as I think they are counterproductive.

On the court, I want to try and get to the free-throw line a little more. And as a point guard, you can always get better at your decision-making and limiting your mistakes.

Politics, as a practise, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.

I am fearful, or suspicious, of generalizations… They cannot guide me reliably in making decisions about particular individuals.

Most businesses think that product is the most important thing, but without great leadership, mission and a team that deliver results at a high level, even the best product won’t make a company successful.

There are some members of the House leadership whose only mission in life is to demonize the president.

I’m not a conservative of any kind.

A public man must never forget that he loses his usefulness when he as an individual, rather than his policy, becomes the issue.

He who exercises government by means of his virtue may be compared to the north polar star, which keeps its place and all the stars turn towards it.

It’s impossible, I think, however much I’d become disillusioned politically or evolve into a post-political person, I don’t think I’d ever change my view that socialism is the best political moment humans have ever come up with.

He who dreads hostility too much is unfit to rule.

Let me define a leader. He must have vision and passion and not be afraid of any problem. Instead, he should know how to defeat it. Most importantly, he must work with integrity.

Honor is not the exclusive property of any political party.

All ideologies are idiotic, whether religious or political, for it is conceptual thinking, the conceptual word, which has so unfortunately divided man.

The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be… The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.

I always tell people that if I move anywhere it would be Toronto.

It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.

Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.

I would be stupid not to be on my own side. But I’m a human being, too. And I’m on the side of human beings, rather than on the side of crocodiles.

Political courage is not political suicide.

I have considered voting Conservative because I am so against the Labour party.

My favourite president, and the one I admired most, was Harry Truman.

Let me just be very clear that the Republican Party will select a nominee that will beat Bill Clinton.

Buy the ticket, take the ride.

If you want to be a good strategist, you can never just go off a principle you read in a book. You need to adapt what you do to the situation; no rule of thumb is true all the time.

The thing the sixties did was to show us the possibilities and the responsibility that we all had. It wasn’t the answer. It just gave us a glimpse of the possibility.

I definitely connected to the fact that life gets out of control and you end up doing things and wishing you were doing other things instead.

It is a fine thing to have ability, but the ability to discover ability in others is the true test.

A man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot endure in his age.

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.