Habitat has opened up unprecedented opportunities for me to cross the chasm that separates those of us who are free, safe, financially secure, well fed and housed, and influential enough to shape our own destiny from our neighbors who enjoy few, if any, of these advantages of life.
Interpretation
Carter highlights the disparity between those with privileges and those without, emphasizing the importance of using opportunities for social equity.
In this quote, Jimmy Carter reflects on the significant gap that exists between privileged individuals and those who lack basic necessities and freedoms. He recognizes how Habitat for Humanity has provided him with the means to contribute toward bridging this gap, advocating for social justice and the importance of uplifting those who are less fortunate. The essence of his message underscores a moral responsibility to leverage one's advantages in life to support and empower others in need.
In practice
During a speech about social responsibility, I quoted this to emphasize the need for equitable development.
Acknowledging the physical realities of our planet does not mean a dismal future of endless sacrifice. In fact, acknowledging these realities is the first step in dealing with them. We can meet the resource problems of the world - water, food, minerals, farmlands, forests, overpopulation, pollution - if we tackle them with courage and foresight.
The preeminent obstacle to peace is Israel's colonization of Palestine.
I would say the biggest handicap we have right now is some nutcases in our country that don't believe in global warming. I think they are going to change their position because of pressure from individuals, because the evidence of the ravages of global warming is already there.
If I were president, I'd be very glad to see the Palestinians have a nation recognized by the United Nations. There's no downside to it.
My understanding of racial discrimination as a child was highly distorted because the most prominent man in Archery was an African-American bishop. When he came home from up north, where he was in charge of A.M.E. churches in five states, it was front-page news. He was the most successful man in my life.
Our American values are not luxuries but necessities, not the salt in our bread, but the bread itself. Our common vision of a free and just society is our greatest source of cohesion at home and strength abroad, greater than the bounty of our material blessings.
Philosophers there are who try to make themselves believe that this life is happy; but they believe it only while they are saying it, and never yet produced conviction in a single mind.
America is the only nation in the world that is founded on creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence; perhaps the only piece of practical politics that is also theoretical politics and also great literature.
Most sets of values would give rise to universes that, although they might be very beautiful, would contain no one able to wonder at that beauty.
I want hard stories, I demand them from myself. Hard stories are worth the difficulty. It seems to me the only way I have forgiven anything, understood anything, is through that process of opening up to my own terror and pain and reexamining it, re-creating it in the story, and making it something different, making it meaningful - even if the meaning is only in the act of the telling.
It is just because civilization is ever evolving, changing, and becoming more complicated, that experts find it so difficult to define it in explicit terms.
Faith is the function of the heart.
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