Mario Cuomo Quotes

When you mention the word ideology, everyone has communism in the back of their minds, which was an entirely well formulated ideology and statement of belief. You read the Communist Manifesto and you know what the core of it is.

My objection to Liberalism is this that it is the introduction into the practical business of life of the highest kind namely, politics of philosophical ideas instead of political principles.

It has been demonstrated that no system, not even the most inhuman, can continue to exist without an ideology.

Slowly, ideas lead to ideology, lead to policies that lead to actions.

I used to think that capitalism was human nature, but it isn’t at all. It’s culture. The same is true of democracy/

Our real battlefield today is Asia and our real battle is the one between democracy and communism.... We have to prove to the world and particularly to downtrodden areas of the world which are the natural prey to the principles of communist economics that democracy really brings about happier and better conditions for the people as a whole.

Political institutions are a superstructure resting on an economic foundation.

A political ideology is a very handy thing to have. It’s a real time saver because it tells you what you think about things you know nothing about.

Most people borrow an ideology by identifying with a social group ... [and] a body of sacred documents and heroes.

There are certain catchwords which have a marvelous charm to calm the breast political, a magic power to levitate the mind captivated by them, out of the regions of mere argument and recognition of facts. Such a hold do these words and the deified abstractions they cover have on the average man of the nineteenth century, that they and they alone are worshipped as the ultimate manifestation of goodness, beauty, and truth. To be opposed to these abstractions is to be condemned as blasphemous against the first principles of rectitude, moral and political.

I dislike Communism because it is undemocratic, and capitalism because it favors exploitation.

The strongest argument for socialism is that it sounds good. The strongest argument against socialism is that it doesn't work. But those who live by words will always have a soft spot in their hearts for socialism because it sounds so good.

What we were striving for was a kind of modified form of communism.

In Democracy, man exploits man; in Communism, it's the other way round.

The trouble with Communism is the Communists, just as the trouble with Christianity is the Christians.

Politics is how you think about life itself.

Communism, being the lay form of Catholicism, and indeed meaning the same thing, has never had any lack of chaplains.

As soon as you bring up money, I notice, conversation gets sociological, then political, then moral.

To be honest, politics is so weird. I think it's more heavy than religion.

You hear that liberalism lacks an idea of the common good, but I think that's a mistake.

In my opinion nothing has contributed more to the corruption of the original idea of socialism as the belief that Russia is a socialist country.

Don't you get the idea I'm one of those goddam radicals. Don't get the idea I'm knocking the American system.

I would define myself as a Marxian, and that means of course also as a humanist.

No man has come so near our definition of a constitutional statesman - the powers of a first-rate man and the creed of a second-rate man.

I don't encourage socialists or anarchists to accept falsehoods, in particular, to see revolutionary potential where there is none.