Mario Cuomo Quotes

There is a respectable body of economic thought that holds that casino gambling is actually economically regressive to a state and a community.

Please make this nation remember how futures are built

The problems of a retired schoolteacher in Duluth are OUR problems. That the future of the child in Buffalo is OUR future. That the struggle of a disabled man in Boston to survive and live decently is OUR struggle. That The hunger of a woman in Little Rock is OUR hunger. That the failure anywhere to provide what reasonably we might to avoid pain is OUR failure.

My parents were immigrants.

Way down deep the American people are afraid of an entangling relationship between formal religions - or whole bodies of religious belief - and government.

People expect Byzantine, Machiavellian logic from politicians. But the truth is simple. Trial lawyers learn a good rule: 'Don't decide what you don't have to decide.' That's not evasion, it's wisdom.

The Republicans believe that the wagon train will not make it to the frontier unless some of the old, some of the young, some of the weak are left behind.

The problem is that you can't impose the church's teachings on all Americans as a matter of law.

No one in the modern history of this country, no president, has done more to move toward a balanced budget than has President Bill Clinton.

For me to make lasagna would be a desecration of a great Italian dish ... I don't mess with sacred things.

There are some who ask us to believe that if we want the best of times for ourselves, the fit and the fortunate, then we'll just have to learn to live with the worst of times for millions of other Americans - that we're doomed to be a nation of the lucky and the left-out. I don't believe it. My mother didn't believe it. Your ancestors didn't believe it. And I don't think you should believe it.

I talk and talk and talk, and I haven't taught people in fifty years what my father taught me by example in one week.

We believe in a government strong enough to use words like "love" and "compassion" and smart enough to convert our noblest aspirations into practical realities.

We believe in a government that is characterized by fairness and reasonableness, a reasonableness that goes beyond labels, that doesn't distort or promise to do things that we know we can't do.

In 1984, I gave a speech at Notre Dame titled 'Religious Belief and Public Morality.' I said that Catholic legislators will live by the laws of the church because we want to stay in the club.

Bill Clinton has done more to help the middle class than any leader in decades.

What I didn't do was pick one thing and keep saying it over and over again, so I could have gotten credit for it.

The American people need no course in philosophy or political science of church history to know that God should not be made into a celestial party chairman.

Entertainers and sports figures achieve fame and wealth but find the world empty and dull without the solace and stimulation of drugs.

The biggest aggravation in the Arab world, the biggest reason for their anger toward us and the creation of those suicide terrorists, is Israel and the difficulty with the Palestinian issue.

Every time I've done something that doesn't feel right, it's ended up not being right.

I had a chance to go on the Supreme Court of the United States, and my whole family was more disappointed in my deciding not to do that than in my deciding not to run for president - much more.

A judge can manipulate the law. A smart lawyer can keep a killer out of jail.

It's an old story; it's as old as our history. The difference between Democrats and Republicans has always been measured in courage and confidence. The Republicans believe that the wagon train will not make it to the frontier unless some of the old, some of the young, some of the weak, are left behind by the side of the trail. The strong, the strong they tell us, will inherit the land. We Democrats believe in something else. We Democrats believe that we can make it all the way with the whole family intact, and we have more than once.

Tax should be the same for everybody.

There are few things more amusing in the world of politics than watching moderate Republicans charging to the right in pursuit of greater glory.

I love immigrants. Legal, illegal - they're not to be despised.

Organized belief in spirituality - that's what a religion is.

The values derived from religious belief will not - and should not - be accepted as part of the public morality unless they are shared by the pluralistic community at large, by consensus.

If I want to run for president, you'll be able to tell.

I don't ever recall having a political argument with Bob Grant. I've known him a long time. I've always liked him.

I went to electric razors so I would not have to look at myself in the morning.

I was badly mauled by people in New York State for being against the death penalty for 12 years.

Barack Obama is probably one of the brightest in terms of sheer intelligence ... also probably the best orator we've ever had as a president.

I am one who believes that the world goes from the slime to the sublime. And you can take Darwin and all your philosophers and all your ontologists, and that's the direction.

I wish I were as good a man as my son is.

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

I think - something I learned recently looking up the meaning of ideology. If you look in American encyclopedias, it says, you know, 'Rules for - basic rules for a system of economics or politics.' If you look in the Oxford, it says that, and then it says ... 'Despite - and people will hold these propositions despite events.'

The truth is the justice system does need review, there are troubling questions that need to be answered, law enforcement needs to respect the community and the community needs to respect law enforcement.

Those two principles: We're supposed to love one another and we're supposed to work together to make the experience better. That's all the religion you need, really, to make a success of this planet ...

Lincoln had bad press, too. He wasn't appreciated until after he was gone.

Democracy is not meant to be efficient, it is meant to be fair.

Every minute brings a new opportunity. Every minute brings new growth, new experiences.

9/11 occurs, and you're going to rebuild, and after awhile, the memory will be there, but there will be something new there, and different, and functioning, and electric.

I concentrated on a lot of things, so very few people saw me as an education governor, an infrastructure governor.

We believe in encouraging the talented, but we believe that while survival of the fittest may be a good working description of the process of evolution, a government of humans should elevate itself to a higher order.

The beauty of America is that I don't have to deny my past to affirm my present. No one does. We can love this nation like a parent and still embrace our ancestral home like cherished grandparents.

I told them that my grandfather had died in the Great Crash of 1929 - a stockbroker jumped out of a window and crushed him and his pushcart down below.

I love bunt plays. I love the idea of the bunt. I love the idea of the sacrifice. Even the word is good. Giving yourself up for the good of the whole.

It is not a government's obligation to provide services, but to see that they are provided.

I guess a psychiatrist would say there's some good to the venting process, but it does also promote an attitude of saying, 'Hey there's nothing wrong with being filled with hate; there's so much of it around.' I don't like that.

We are disgusted by the things that we desire, and we desire what disgusts us.

The first good player I watched as a kid was Joe DiMaggio, and that was like ballet. Since then, I played sandlot and college ball and came to understand how difficult it can be.

My favorite thought about Abraham Lincoln is he believed in two things: loving one another and working together to make this world better.

People asked me what I want as an epitaph: 'He tried'

In this life, you should read everything you can read. Taste everything you can taste. Meet everyone you can meet. Travel everywhere you can travel. Learn everything you can learn. Experience everything you can experience.

I think it's already apparent that a good part of this Nation understands - if only instinctively - that anything which seems to suggest that God favors a political party or the establishment of a state church, is wrong and dangerous.

Outrage is easy, cheap, and oversold. The nation needs less anger and more thoughtful reflection, less shouting and more listening, less dissembling and more honesty.

In 1982, I wrote in my diary that life is motion, not joy. If the way you measure success in life is by how much joy it brings you, you're measuring inaccurately. Life is also sadness, defeat, striving. It is many things.

In the end, I'm convinced we will all benefit if suspicion is replaced by discussion, innuendo by dialogue; if the emphasis in our debate turns from a search for talismanic criteria and neat but simplistic answers to an honest - more intelligent - attempt at describing the role religion has in our public affairs, and the limits placed on that role.

I will take a draft to the Yankees or to the Mets. A draft for president is not conceivable.

It's a Little Leaguers game that major leaguers play extraordinarily well, a game that excites us throughout adulthood. The crack of the bat and the scent of the horsehide on leather bring back our own memories that have been washed away with the sweat and tears of summers long gone ... even as the setting sun pushes the shadows past home plate.

The mugger who is arrested is back on the street before the police officer, but the person mugged may not be back on the street for a long time, if ever.

People like Pete Peterson, the former secretary of commerce and Blackstone and titan of Wall Street, etc., has been writing books for years about the debt and deficit.

For too many, the dream of economic mobility has been replaced with a nightmare of economic stagnation.

I had not even thought of running for president until one day in 1991, at a small fund-raiser, completely unanticipated, someone stood up and said, 'Hey, Mario, in all the years we've supported you, we've never heard you talk about the presidency, and we want to know why not.'

I'm not better than other politicians, but I'm different because I got into the game much later in life, after I had raised a family, after I had written a book, after I had been a successful lawyer. It's different when you get into this business after you've led a full life. I don't want to be a big man. I know who I am.

I did once answer the question 'What would you say on your tombstone?' I know what I would say: 'Mario Cuomo, 1932 - dash,' and, 'He tried.' That's it.

There's something about rhetorical violence that is ugly and worrying.

There are only two rules for being successful: one, figure out exactly what you want to do, and two, do it.

I watched a small man with thick calluses on both hands work 15 and 16 hours a day. I saw him once literally bleed from the bottoms of his feet, a man who came here uneducated, alone, unable to speak the language, who taught me all I needed to know about faith and hard work by the simple eloquence of his example.

I am a trial lawyer. Matilda says that at dinner on a good day I sound like an affidavit.

In 1960 Americans chose John F. Kennedy because they were ready for change. They were ready for new and better ideas. After six years of scandals and failed policies under the Reagan Administration, Americans are again ready for change and stronger leadership. I love my country. That is why I am seeking the Democratic nomination for president.

The Catholic teaching against murder, for example, is largely the same as our secular laws. But as a law, it obviously has a secular rationale at least as strong as its religious rationale.

There is no basis to say I'm being coy about running for president. If I chose to explore the presidency, I wouldn't do it in a backward way. I'll say, 'I'm exploring the presidency.'

Debates are boring.

We Democrats still have a dream. We still believe in this nation's future.

In 1980, in 1984, millions of middle-class Democrats became Reagan Democrats, and more of them drifted toward the Republicans with Bush in 1988.

You can't ever make serious progress against terrorism unless you deal with Israel.

The closed circle of materialism is clear to us now - aspirations become wants, wants become needs, and self-gratification becomes a bottomless pit.