Top 40 Mario M. Cuomo Quotes (2025 Update)

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

— Mario M. Cuomo

2. “There are only two rules for being successful. One, figure out exactly what you want to do, and two, do it.”

— Mario M. Cuomo

3. “You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.”

— Mario M. Cuomo

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

— Mario M. Cuomo

5. “In this life, you should read everything you can read. Taste everything you can taste. Meet everyone you can meet. Travel everywhere you can travel. Learn everything you can learn. Experience everything you can experience.”

— Mario M. Cuomo

6. “The closed circle of materialism is clear to us now – aspirations become wants, wants become needs, and self-gratification becomes a bottomless pit.”

— Mario M. Cuomo

7. “A judge can manipulate the law. A smart lawyer can keep a killer out of jail.”

— Mario M. Cuomo

8. “People asked me what I want as an epitaph: ‘He tried’”

— Mario M. Cuomo

9. “Please make this nation remember how futures are built.”

— Mario M. Cuomo

10. “Democracy is not meant to be efficient, it is meant to be fair.”

— Mario M. Cuomo

11. “It is not a government’s obligation to provide services, but to see that they are provided.”

— Mario M. Cuomo

12. “We are disgusted by the things that we desire, and we desire what disgusts us.”

— Mario M. Cuomo

13. “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 M. Cuomo

14. “We believe in a government strong enough to use words like “love” and “compassion” and smart enough to convert our noblest aspirations into practical realities.”

— Mario M. Cuomo

Featured in: Strong Quotes

15. “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 M. Cuomo

16. “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.”

— Mario M. Cuomo

17. “For too many, the dream of economic mobility has been replaced with a nightmare of economic stagnation.”

— Mario M. Cuomo

18. “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 M. Cuomo

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

— Mario M. Cuomo

20. “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 M. Cuomo

21. “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 M. Cuomo

22. “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.”

— Mario M. Cuomo

23. “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 M. Cuomo

24. “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 M. Cuomo

25. “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 M. Cuomo

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

— Mario M. Cuomo

27. “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 M. Cuomo

28. “We believe in only the government we need, but we insist on all the government we need.”

— Mario M. Cuomo

29. “I somehow got this reputation of diddling and dithering. I don’t remember dithering at all.”

— Mario M. Cuomo

30. “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 M. Cuomo

31. “The price of seeking to force our beliefs on others is that someday they might force their beliefs on us.”

— Mario M. Cuomo

32. “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 M. Cuomo

33. “The values derived from religious belief will not – and should not – be accepted as part of the public morality unless they are shared by the pluralistic community at large, by consensus.”

— Mario M. Cuomo

34. “You want calamities? What about the Ice Age?”

— Mario M. Cuomo

35. “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.”

— Mario M. Cuomo

36. “You will not be able to tell that they are capable of greatness until you provide them with a packed house, a 3-and-2 count and the game is on the line.”

— Mario M. Cuomo

37. “What I didn’t do was pick one thing and keep saying it over and over again, so I could have gotten credit for it.”

— Mario M. Cuomo

38. “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 M. Cuomo

39. “Way down deep the American people are afraid of an entangling relationship between formal religions – or whole bodies of religious belief – and government.”

— Mario M. Cuomo

40. “Decide exactly what you want to achieve. Do you want to help people, or do you want to be powerful?”

— Mario M. Cuomo

41. “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 M. Cuomo

42. “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 will bring people to their feet as with speeches that bring people to their senses.”

— Mario M. Cuomo