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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.

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
Government
Distort
Believe
Characterized
Things
Fairness
Labels
Promise
Beyond
Goes
Doesn
Reasonableness

More quotes by Mario Cuomo

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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.
Mario Cuomo
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Decide exactly what you want to achieve. Do you want to help people, or do you want to be powerful?
Mario Cuomo
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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.
Mario Cuomo
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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.
Mario Cuomo
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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?
Mario Cuomo
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We work harder and we earn less. Income inequality is at the highest point in over a century. While American capitalism never guaranteed success, it did guarantee opportunity, for too many, the dream of economic mobility has been replaced with a nightmare of economic stagnation.
Mario Cuomo
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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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We believe in only the government we need, but we insist on all the government we need.
Mario Cuomo
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I said I didn't want to run for president. I didn't ask you to believe me.
Mario Cuomo
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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.
Mario Cuomo
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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.
Mario Cuomo
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It is not a government's obligation to provide services, but to see that they are provided.
Mario Cuomo
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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.
Mario Cuomo
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We are disgusted by the things that we desire, and we desire what disgusts us.
Mario Cuomo
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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.
Mario Cuomo
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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.
Mario Cuomo
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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.
Mario Cuomo
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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.
Mario Cuomo
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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.
Mario Cuomo
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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.
Mario Cuomo