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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

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Mario Cuomo
Age: 82 †
Born: 1932
Born: June 15
Died: 2015
Died: January 1
Baseball Player
Former Governor Of New York
Lawyer
Politician
Jamaica
Queens
Mario Matthew Cuomo
People
Expect
Trial
Wisdom
Trials
Politics
Politicians
Simple
Lawyer
Learn
Decide
Machiavellian
Political
Logic
Byzantine
Truth
Rule
Evasion
Good
Politician
Lawyers

More quotes by Mario Cuomo

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Democracy is not meant to be efficient, it is meant to be fair.
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I said I didn't want to run for president. I didn't ask you to believe me.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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For me to make lasagna would be a desecration of a great Italian dish. . . . I don't mess with sacred things.
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We are disgusted by the things that we desire, and we desire what disgusts us.
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A judge can manipulate the law. A smart lawyer can keep a killer out of jail.
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Most of us have achieved levels of affluence and comfort unthought of two generations ago. We've never had it so good, most of us. Nor have we ever complained so bitterly about our problems.
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The closed circle of materialism is clear to us now - aspirations become wants, wants become needs, and self-gratification becomes a bottomless pit.
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I talk and talk and talk, and I haven't taught people in 50 years what my father taught by example in one week.
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It is not a government's obligation to provide services, but to see that they are provided.
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There are few things more amusing in the world of politics than watching moderate Republicans charging to the right in pursuit of greater glory.
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People asked me what I want as an epitaph: 'He tried'
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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.
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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.
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For too many, the dream of economic mobility has been replaced with a nightmare of economic stagnation.
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The American people need no course in philosophy or political science or church history to know that God should not be made into a celestial party chairman.
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