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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Most of them immigrants. These people came Promised Land. They came fresh & they got Destroyed.

The densest despair takes
Us to no ordinary joy.
Sometimes diving
Into the deep inside us
Is the only way
We rise above it.

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

While we might feel small, separate, and all alone, our people have never been more tightly tethered. The question’s not if we will weather this unknown, but how we will weather the unknown together.

The world still terrifies us. We're told to write what we know. We write what we're afraid of. Only then is our fear made small by what we love.

We’re more conditioned To contagion than combat. But a virus, just like a war, separates us From our fellow people. Yet if we are willing, the cut Can be an aperture, the hole Through which we reach for the whole Of one another.

It took us losing ourselves To see we require no kingdom But this kinship. It is the nightmare, never The dream, that shocks us awake.

But the point of protest isn't winning;
It's holding fast to the promise of freedom,
Even when fast victory is not promised.

But tomorrow isn’t revealed, Rather rendered, refined. Wrought. Remember that fate isn’t fought Against. It is fought for. Again & again.

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

The fact of the matter is that our country seldom counts all who
Matter. This is why red seeps from our flag.

We cannot possess hope without practicing it. It is the most fundamental craft we demand of ourselves.

To be haunted is to be hunted
By a history that is still hurting,
Needing healing as much as we do.

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.

We will not march back to what was,
But move to what shall be:
A country that is bruised but whole,
Benevolent but bold.
Fierce and free.