Mario Cuomo quotes - page 2
We believe we must be the family of America, recognizing that at the heart of the matter we are bound one to another, that the problems of a retired school teacher in Duluth are our problems; that the future of the child - that the future of the child in Buffalo is our future; that the struggle of a disabled man in Boston to survive and live decently is our struggle; that the hunger of a woman in Little Rock is our hunger; that the failure anywhere to provide what reasonably we might, to avoid pain, is our failure.
Mario Cuomo
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.
Mario Cuomo
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
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
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.
That those values happen to be religious values does not deny them acceptability as a part of this consensus. But it does not require their acceptability, either.
Mario Cuomo
Tell me, ladies and gentlemen, are we the ones to tell them what their instructors have tried to teach them for years? That the philosophers were right.
That Saint Francis, Buddha, Muhammad, Maimonides - all spoke the truth when they said the only way to serve yourself is to serve others; and that Aristotle was right, before them, when he said the only way to assure yourself happiness is to learn to give happiness.
Mario Cuomo
I can offer you no final truths, complete and unchallengeable. But it's possible this one effort will provoke other efforts - both in support and contradiction of my position - that will help all of us understand our differences and perhaps even discover some basic agreement.
In the end, I'm convinced we will all benefit if suspicion is replaced by discussion, innuendo by dialogue; if the emphasis in our debate turns from a search for talismanic criteria and neat but simplistic answers to an honest - more intelligent - attempt at describing the role religion has in our public affairs, and the limits placed on that role.
And if we do it right - if we're not afraid of the truth even when the truth is complex - this debate, by clarification, can bring relief to untold numbers of confused - even anguished - Catholics, as well as to many others who want only to make our already great democracy even stronger than it is.
Mario Cuomo