Mario Cuomo Quotes

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

I've been taking a closer look at these graduates. They are actually taller, stronger, smarter than we were, smart enough maybe to take our mistakes as their messages, to make our weaknesses their lessons, and to make our example — good and not so good — part of their education.

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.

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.

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

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

We must make the American people hear our Tale of Two Cities. We must convince them that we don't have to settle for two cities, that we can have one city, indivisible, shining for all of its people.

We believe we must be the family of America, recognizing that at the heart of the matter we are bound one to another, that the problems of a retired school teacher in Duluth are our problems; that the future of the child — 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.

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

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.

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... We democrats believe that we can make it all the new way with the whole family intact

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

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.