"Do what you can to show you care about other people, and you will make our world a better place"
About this Quote
The phrasing does two smart things. First, it lowers the bar without lowering the stakes: “Do what you can” acknowledges constraint. Not everyone has power, time, money, or perfect mental health. The line refuses the guilt-driven hero narrative and replaces it with a scalable ethic - care as something you can practice in small, repeatable acts. Second, it shifts from feeling to proof. “Show you care” is about visibility: care isn’t private sentiment; it’s behavior that lands on other people’s nervous systems as safety, respect, or relief. The subtext is quietly corrective to a culture that treats empathy as self-expression rather than responsibility.
Then comes the civic turn: “you will make our world a better place.” “Our” does real work, insisting the payoff isn’t personal virtue but shared conditions. Coming from a First Lady, it reads as a soft rebuke to top-down promises: no administration can substitute for a public willing to practice decency. Carter’s intent is almost disarmingly tactical - a call to rebuild the social fabric one observable, doable choice at a time.
Quote Details
| Topic | Kindness |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Carter, Rosalynn. (2026, January 16). Do what you can to show you care about other people, and you will make our world a better place. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/do-what-you-can-to-show-you-care-about-other-125291/
Chicago Style
Carter, Rosalynn. "Do what you can to show you care about other people, and you will make our world a better place." FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/do-what-you-can-to-show-you-care-about-other-125291/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Do what you can to show you care about other people, and you will make our world a better place." FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/do-what-you-can-to-show-you-care-about-other-125291/. Accessed 21 Feb. 2026.









