"Testing oneself is best when done alone."

- Jimmy Carter

"I've been writing poems since I was in the Navy - to Rosalynn. I found I could say things in poems that I never could in prose. Deeper, more personal things. I could write a poem about my mother that I could never tell my mother. Or feelings about being on a submarine that I would have been too embarrassed to share with fellow submariners."

- Jimmy Carter

"I'll never tell a lie. I'll never make a misleading statement. I'll never betray the confidence that any of you had in me. And I'll never avoid a controversial issue."

- Jimmy Carter

"The best way to enhance freedom in other lands is to demonstrate here that our democratic system is worthy of emulation."

- Jimmy Carter

"The experience of democracy is like the experience of life itself—always changing, infinite in its variety, sometimes turbulent and all the more valuable for having been tested in adversity."

- Jimmy Carter