Mario Cuomo

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

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

“It was anticipating self-defense.”

“I said I didn’t want to run for president. I didn’t ask you to believe me.”

“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.”

“When you’ve parked the second car in the garage, and installed the hot tub, and skied in Colorado, and wind-surfed in the Caribbean, when you’ve had your first love affair and your second and your third, the question will remain, where does the dream end for me?”

“I’d say, “That’s it, Charlie, you’re going to be by yourself for a hundred years.””

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

“If you can manipulate news, a judge can manipulate the law. A smart lawyer can keep a killer out of jail, a smart accountant can keep a thief from paying taxes, a smart reporter could ruin your reputation — unfairly.”

“I have no plans, and no plans to plan.”

“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.”

“Lincoln isn’t a man with ingrown toenails, he’s an idea.”

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

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

“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.”

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

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

“Most of us have achieved levels of affluence and comfort unthought of two generations ago. All around us we have seen success in the world's terms become ultimate and desperate failure.”

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

“How simple it seems now. We thought the Sermon on the Mount was a nice allegory and nothing more. What we didn't understand until we got to be a little older was that it was the whole answer, the whole truth. That the way — the only way — to succeed and to be happy is to learn those rules so basic that a shepherd's son could teach them to an ignorant flock without notes or formulae.”

“Do we have the right now to tell them that when Saint Francis begged the Lord to teach him to want to console instead of seeking to be consoled — to teach him to want to love instead of desiring to be loved — that he was really being selfish? Because he knew the only way to be fulfilled and pleased and happy was to give instead of trying to get.”

“How do we tell them that one not be discouraged by the imperfection of the world and the inevitability of death and diminishment. How do we tell them when they lose a child, or are crippled, or know that they will themselves die too soon — that God permits pain and sickness and unfairness and evil to exist, only in order to permit us to test our mettle and to earn a fulfillment that would otherwise not be possible?”

“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?”

“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.”

“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.”

“I would like to tell them, the graduates, all of this, and I know that if we thought they would not be embarrassed by hearing it, we would all be telling them about how proud we are of them and how much we believe in them and their future. But again maybe we don't have to tell them; maybe they know. Maybe they can tell just by seeing the love in our eyes today.”

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

“If he had told the voters in 1980 that truth, would American voters have signed the loan certificate for him on Election Day? Of course not! That was an election won under false pretenses. It was won with smoke and mirrors and illusions. And that's the kind of recovery we have now as well.”

“We must get the American public to look past the glitter, beyond the showmanship, to the reality, the hard substance of things. And we'll do it not so much with speeches that sound good as with speeches that are good and sound; not so much with speeches that will bring people to their feet as with speeches that will bring people to their senses.”

“We believe in a single fundamental idea that describes better than most textbooks and any speech that I could write what a proper government should be: the idea of family, mutuality, the sharing of benefits and burdens for the good of all, feeling one another's pain, sharing one another's blessings — reasonably, honestly, fairly, without respect to race, or sex, or geography, or political affiliation.”

“I watched a small man with thick calluses on both hands work fifteen and sixteen 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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“David Robinson chose to stay at Navy. He talked about commitment, loyalty and values. I wonder how many of us would choose these virtues rather than the chance of becoming a millionaire, especially if you were a college sophomore when you had to make that choice.”

“I have no plans, and no plans to plan.”