Mario Cuomo: Goodness

Mario Cuomo was American politician, Governor of New York. Explore interesting quotes on goodness.
Mario Cuomo: 78   quotes 2   likes

“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 Cuomo

Address at Iona College (1984)
Context: 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.
The closed circle of materialism is clear to us now — aspirations become wants, wants become needs, and self-gratification becomes a bottomless pit.
All around us we have seen success in the world's terms become ultimate and desperate failure. <!-- p. 934

Problem

“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.”

Mario Cuomo

Address at Iona College (1984)

Education , Parting

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

Democratic National Convention Address (1984)

Love , Reality , Strong

“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.”

Mario Cuomo

Democratic National Convention Address (1984)

Pain , Family , Sex , Feeling

“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.
Way down deep the American people are afraid of an entangling relationship between formal religions — or whole bodies of religious belief — and government. Apart from constitutional law and religious doctrine, there is a sense that tells us it's wrong to presume to speak for God or to claim God's sanction of our particular legislation and His rejection of all other positions. Most of us are offended when we see religion being trivialized by its appearance in political throw-away pamphlets.
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

Religious Belief and Public Morality (1984)

God , People , Religion , Law

“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.”

Mario Cuomo

That's not evasion, it's wisdom.
As quoted in The Quotable Politician (2003) by William B. Whitman, p. 25

Wisdom , People , Truth , Learning

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

Mario Cuomo

New York Times (10 November 1986)