Mario Cuomo Short Quotes

18 Sourced Quotes

View all Mario Cuomo Quotes
Lincoln isn't a man with ingrown toenails, he's an idea.

Mario Cuomo
I said I didn't want to run for president. I didn't ask you to believe me.

Mario Cuomo
We campaign in poetry, but when we're elected, we're forced to govern in prose.

Mario Cuomo
I'd say, That's it, Charlie, you're going to be by yourself for a hundred years.

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

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

Mario Cuomo
You want calamities? What about the Ice Age? … God made this world, but didn't complete it.

Mario Cuomo
We speak for millions of reasoning people fighting to preserve our environment from greed and from stupidity.

Mario Cuomo
I talk and talk and talk, and I haven't taught people in 50 years what my father taught by example in one week.

Mario Cuomo
Do you blame me, ladies and gentlemen, for being reluctant to deliver to them the message that is traditional on commencement day?

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

Mario Cuomo
Indeed, as I think about it, I have to conclude that these young people before me today are the best reason for hope that this world knows.

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

Mario Cuomo
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.

Mario Cuomo
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.

Mario Cuomo
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.

Mario Cuomo
How can we tell our children that — when we have ourselves so often cried out in bitter despair at what we regarded to be the injustice of life — and when we have so often surrendered?

Mario Cuomo
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.

Mario Cuomo