War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.

Carter frames war in stark moral terms: even when leaders argue it is unavoidable, it remains intrinsically wrong rather than a positive instrument of policy. The phrasing rejects the common rhetoric of “good wars” by insisting that necessity does not transform violence into virtue. The final sentence shifts from abstract ethics to human cost, emphasizing that war’s victims are often the young and powerless, and that such killing corrodes the very possibility of reconciliation. The quote reflects Carter’s broader post-presidential identity as a peace-oriented statesman, skeptical of militarized solutions and committed to conflict resolution grounded in human rights and empathy.