Amanda Gorman Quotes

American poet and activist

Amanda Gorman (born 7 March 1998) is an American poet and social activist. She published the poetry book The One for Whom Food Is Not Enough in 2015, and became the first National Youth Poet Laureate in 2017. She studied sociology at Harvard College, and graduated cum laude as a member of Phi Beta Kappa. She received worldwide attention with her recitation of her poem "The Hill We Climb" written for the inauguration of US President Joe Biden.

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Alternative Names: Amanda S. C. Gorman

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Some days, we just need a place where we can bleed in peace. Our only word for this is poem.

The hill we climb, if only we dare it: Because being American is more than a pride we inherit — It’s the past we step into, and how we repair it.

We find ourselves not by being
The most seen, but the most seeing.
We watch a toddler
Freewheel through warm grass,
Not fleeing, just running, the way rivers do,
For it is in their unfettered nature.
We smile, our whole face cleared
By that single dazzling thin.
How could we not be altered.

we know our inaction and inertia
will be the inheritance of the next generation
Our blunders become their burdens
But one thing is certain:
If we merge mercy with might,
and might with right,
then love becomes our legacy
and change our children’s birthright
So let us leave behind a country
better than the one we were left with

Writing, truth-telling to one another, is an act of hope-making when hope is hardest found.

The question isn't if we can weather this unknown,
But how we will weather this unknown together.

There is always light.
Only if we are brave enough to see it.
There is always light.
Only if we are brave enough to be it.

Welcome back to the wild (advertisement for a zoo)
Watch movies like they were meant to be seen (advertisement for a movie theater)

Disease is physiological death, Loneliness is a social one, Where the old We collapses like a lung.

Meaning, we cannot stand up to police If we cannot cease policing our imagination, Convincing our communities that this won’t work, When the work hasn’t even begun, That this can wait, When we’ve already waited out a thousand suns. By now, we understand That white supremacy & the despair it demands Are as destructive as any disease.