Mario Cuomo Quotes

My father's best friend, Georgie Terra, was an Italian guy. The children and the cousins and nieces and nephews were children of the Mafia. Those were the children he grew up with. If you want to go to a safe neighborhood, go to where the Mafia is.

I grew up in a city, an Italian, knowing what the Mafia was.

I have such an image of a mafioso.

People love stories about the mafia: 'The Godfather,' 'American Gangster.'

I lived in mafia neighborhoods off and on when I was a kid. If you were in Little Italy, in East Harlem, in Brooklyn... Those neighborhoods were, in those years, dominated by mafia families. You knew it and you felt it, you know?

One thing I take great pride in is that my case was the one that started the decline of the Mafia.

What I learned about the mob wasn't through lectures at the academy.

If you look at 'The Sopranos,' there's this notion of a criminal element on its last legs.

If you think about the traditional mafia stories we grew up on, it is always about the death of criminal organisations - things like the 'Sopranos' - the last vestiges of once proud families subsumed by the modern era.

As a teen-ager I played cards, shot craps, played pool, went to the track, hung around social clubs. I knew that some card and crap games were run by the mob, and some social clubs were mob social clubs. Even as a kid I knew guys that were here today, gone tomorrow, never seen again, and I knew what had happened.

He [Donald Trump] is like - he's a magnet for crime and extortion and, you know, just really criminal investments which are extremely dangerous.

The Italian mafia, they're very [into] construction. They're in a whole different way of operating than they did back in the '20s.

I'm Dan Gelber. As a federal prosecutor, I helped put away corporate criminals, corrupt politicians and violent gangs.

Playing the game, and unfortunately, playing the gangster game is very profitable.

Prosecutors say my father was the biggest crime boss in the nation... If you really want to know what John Gotti was like, you need to talk to my family. We lived this life.

Organized crime in America takes in over forty billion dollars a year and spends very little on office supplies.

Italian-Americans are not the Mafia.

Simply that we are mirroring the trends in society, at any given time smuggling was an issue in the seventies, corruption is an issue today, and we faithfully reflect those issues.

Wherever there's opportunity, the mafia will be there.

Our country has been overtaken by murderous thugs... gangsters who lust after fortunes and power.

Crime, money, power, drugs - are all linked.

I never put my arms around John Gotti, Al Capone or Lucky Luciano.

There are Mafia families that have bought magnificent houses on the North Shore, although not yet the great estates because they don't want that kind of high profile.

People have told me about organized crime in the fashion industry, but I can't talk about that. I'm looking to stay alive.

I wasn't aware of it at the time, but I was a big favorite with the Mafia.