Amanda Gorman Quotes

We will be protected & served
By a force that is honored & honest.
This is more than a protest,
It's a promise

That is the promised glade, 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.

Like a page, we are only legible when opened to one another.

When day comes, we step out of the shade of flame and unafraid.
The new dawn balloons as we free it.
For there is always light, if only we’re brave enough to see it.
If only we’re brave enough to be it.
The Hill We Climb: An Inaugural Poem for the Country

We can only fully understand language by what doesn't survive it.

For there is always light,
If only we’re brave enough to see it.
If only we’re brave enough to be it.

Because being American is more than a pride we inherit — It's the past we step into, and how we repair it.

Erasure demands a lifetime of rehearsal. Do you really understand what it is to be this disposable body. We recognize the sobs now for the flags they were. The jerk of our heads, as if waking from a dream — or a nightmare. You decide. This is not the nation we built, at most not the nation we've known. Know. Oh, no. This is the nation we've sewn. It is our right to weep for the wound we've always been. A silent shock out of the blue: a hand hung to another or a head pillowed by a shoulder is by far worth more than anything we've won or wanted. When told we can't make a difference, we'll still make a sound.

We forget this immensity, it will still be ours, for we wrote such mysteries down: we did the thing others dared not. We collected all the dazzling & dangerous & dreamed aches, scrapped them, though we did not yet have words by which to map them.

By Goodbye, we truly mean:
Let us be able to say hello again.

Our country, which we do not
forsake for being un-great, that
we should find by being good.

Together, we envision a land that is liberated, not lawless. We create a future that is free, not flawless. Again & again, over & over, We will stride up every mountainside, Magnanimous & modest. We will be protected & served By a force that is honored & honest. This is more than protest. It’s a promise.

"What is called "great"
Is often grievous & gruesome,
But what is good is worth our words,
Good trouble.
Good fight.
Good will.
Good people.
To be good is to be larger than war.
It is to be more than great."

When day comes we ask ourselves where can we find light in this never-ending shade? The loss we carry. A sea we must wade. We’ve braved the belly of the beast. We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace. In the norms and notions of what "just is" isn’t always justice. And yet, the dawn is ours before we knew it. Somehow we do it. Somehow we’ve weathered and witnessed a nation that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished.

through some fictions we find fact; in some fantasies we discover ourselves & then some.