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Zohran Mamdani
38 quotes
“We are special as DSA electeds not because of ourselves, we are special because of our organization.”
Zohran Mamdani (born 1991) first seen 2023 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Mamdani during his keynote speech during the 2023 DSA convention (4 August 2023)
“This campaign is for every person who believes in the dignity of their neighbors and that the government's job is to actually make our lives better.”
Zohran Mamdani (born 1991) first seen 2025 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Statement displayed on Mamdani's campaign website during his run for Mayor of New York City in 2025
“You know, this is not the first time that President Trump is going to comment on myself, and I encourage him -- just like I encourage every New Yorker -- to learn about my actual policies to make the city affordable But if he continues to focus on persecuting political enemies and on trying to detain and disappear New Yorkers, be it on the basis of their documentation or their sexual orientation or their politics, that is someone that I will fight time and again.”
Zohran Mamdani (born 1991) first seen 2025 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Mamdani shares advice to Democrats after stunning NYC mayoral primary win" by Rachel Scott, ABC News (25 June 2025)
“We don't need an investigation to know that the NYPD is racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety. What we need is to #DefundTheNYPD.”
Zohran Mamdani (born 1991) first seen 2025 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Rival calls Cuomo a 'sociopath;' ex-gov attacks Mamdani's 'defund' rhetoric in final weekend of NYC mayor's race" Politico (21 June 2025)
“Every day in Gaza has become a place where grief, itself, has run out of language, I mourn these lives and pray for the families that have been shattered. Our government has been complicit through it all. This must end. The occupation and apartheid must end.”
Zohran Mamdani (born 1991) first seen 2025 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani's statement on Oct. 7 attacks deemed "shameful" by Israel", CBS News (7 October 2025)
“We have to make clear that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it’s been laced by the IDF.”
Zohran Mamdani (born 1991) first seen 2025 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Mamdani says NYPD boots ‘on your neck’ were ‘laced by the IDF’ in vile video" by Carl Campanile and Matt Troutman, NY Post (28 October 2025)
“I wish Andrew Cuomo only the best in private life. But let tonight be the final time I utter his name, as we turn the page on a politics that abandons the many and answers only to the few. New York, tonight you have delivered. A mandate for change. A mandate for a new kind of politics. A mandate for a city we can afford. And a mandate for a government that delivers exactly that.”
Zohran Mamdani (born 1991) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“On January 1st, I will be sworn in as the mayor of New York City. And that is because of you. So before I say anything else, I must say this: Thank you. Thank you to the next generation of New Yorkers who refuse to accept that the promise of a better future was a relic of the past. You showed that when politics speaks to you without condescension, we can usher in a new era of leadership. We will fight for you, because we are you.”
Zohran Mamdani (born 1991) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Because of you, we will make this city one that working people can love and live in again. With every door knocked, every petition signature earned, and every hard-earned conversation, you eroded the cynicism that has come to define our politics.”
Zohran Mamdani (born 1991) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Now, I know that I have asked for much from you over this last year. Time and again, you have answered my calls — but I have one final request. New York City, breathe this moment in. We have held our breath for longer than we know. We have held it in anticipation of defeat, held it because the air has been knocked out of our lungs too many times to count, held it because we cannot afford to exhale. Thanks to all of those who sacrificed so much. We are breathing in the air of a city that has been reborn.”
Zohran Mamdani (born 1991) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Standing before you, I think of the words of Jawaharlal Nehru: "A moment comes, but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance." Tonight we have stepped out from the old into the new. So let us speak now, with clarity and conviction that cannot be misunderstood, about what this new age will deliver, and for whom.”
Zohran Mamdani (born 1991) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We will hold bad landlords to account because the Donald Trumps of our city have grown far too comfortable taking advantage of their tenants. We will put an end to the culture of corruption that has allowed billionaires like Trump to evade taxation and exploit tax breaks. We will stand alongside unions and expand labor protections because we know, just as Donald Trump does, that when working people have ironclad rights, the bosses who seek to extort them become very small indeed.”
Zohran Mamdani (born 1991) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“New York will remain a city of immigrants: a city built by immigrants, powered by immigrants and, as of tonight, led by an immigrant. So hear me, President Trump, when I say this: To get to any of us, you will have to get through all of us. When we enter City Hall in 58 days, expectations will be high. We will meet them.”
Zohran Mamdani (born 1991) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A great New Yorker once said that while you campaign in poetry, you govern in prose. If that must be true, let the prose we write still rhyme, and let us build a shining city for all. And we must chart a new path, as bold as the one we have already traveled. After all, the conventional wisdom would tell you that I am far from the perfect candidate. I am young, despite my best efforts to grow older. I am Muslim. I am a democratic socialist. And most damning of all, I refuse to apologize for any of this.”
Zohran Mamdani (born 1991) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Let the words we’ve spoken together, the dreams we’ve dreamt together, become the agenda we deliver together. New York, this power, it’s yours. This city belongs to you. Thank you.”
Zohran Mamdani (born 1991) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My fellow New Yorkers: Today begins a new era.”
Zohran Mamdani (born 1991) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For too long, we have turned to the private sector for greatness, while accepting mediocrity from those who serve the public. I cannot blame anyone who has come to question the role of government, whose faith in democracy has been eroded by decades of apathy. We will restore that trust by walking a different path: one where government is no longer solely the final recourse for those struggling, one where excellence is no longer the exception.”
Zohran Mamdani (born 1991) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And if for too long these communities have existed as distinct from one another, we will draw this city closer together. We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism. If our campaign demonstrated that the people of New York yearn for solidarity, then let this government foster it. Because no matter what you eat, what language you speak, how you pray, or where you come from—the words that most define us are the two we all share: New Yorkers.”
Zohran Mamdani (born 1991) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Eight and a half million New Yorkers will speak this new era into existence. It will be loud. It will be different. It will feel like the New York we love. No matter how long you have called this city home, that love has shaped your life. I know that it has shaped mine.”
Zohran Mamdani (born 1991) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To live in New York, to love New York, is to know that we are the stewards of something without equal in our world. … Where else could a Muslim kid like me grow up eating bagels and lox every Sunday? That love will be our guide as we pursue our agenda. Here, where the language of the New Deal was born, we will return the vast resources of this city to the workers who call it home. Not only will we make it possible for every New Yorker to afford a life they love once again — we will overcome the isolation that too many feel, and connect the people of this city to one another.”
Zohran Mamdani (born 1991) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For too long in our city, freedom has belonged only to those who can afford to buy it. Our City Hall will change that. These promises carried our movement to City Hall, and they will carry us from the rallying cries of a campaign to the realities of a new era in politics.”
Zohran Mamdani (born 1991) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Thank you, my friends. The sun may have set over our city this evening, but as Eugene Debs once said, "I can see the dawn of a better day for humanity." For as long as we can remember, the working people of New York have been told by the wealthy and the well-connected that power does not belong in their hands. Fingers bruised from lifting boxes on the warehouse floor, palms calloused from delivery bike handlebars, knuckles scarred with kitchen burns: These are not hands that have been allowed to hold power. And yet, over the last 12 months, you have dared to reach for something greater. Tonight, against all odds, we have grasped it. The future is in our hands. My friends, we have toppled a political dynasty.”
Zohran Mamdani (born 1991) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I will wake each morning with a singular purpose: to make this city better for you than it was the day before. There are many who thought this day would never come, who feared that we would be condemned only to a future of less, with every election consigning us simply to more of the same. And there are others who see politics today as too cruel for the flame of hope to still burn. New York, we have answered those fears. Tonight we have spoken in a clear voice. Hope is alive. Hope is a decision that tens of thousands of New Yorkers made day after day, volunteer shift after volunteer shift, despite attack ad after attack ad. More than a million of us stood in our churches, in gymnasiums, in community centers, as we filled in the ledger of democracy. And while we cast our ballots alone, we chose hope together. Hope over tyranny. Hope over big money and small ideas. Hope over despair. We won because New Yorkers allowed themselves to hope that the impossible could be made possible. And we won because we insisted that no longer would politics be something that is done to us. Now, it is something that we do.”
Zohran Mamdani (born 1991) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This will be an age where New Yorkers expect from their leaders a bold vision of what we will achieve, rather than a list of excuses for what we are too timid to attempt. Central to that vision will be the most ambitious agenda to tackle the cost-of-living crisis that this city has seen since the days of Fiorello La Guardia: an agenda that will freeze the rents for more than two million rent-stabilized tenants, make buses fast and free, and deliver universal child care across our city. Years from now, may our only regret be that this day took so long to come. This new age will be one of relentless improvement. We will hire thousands more teachers. We will cut waste from a bloated bureaucracy.”
Zohran Mamdani (born 1991) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Safety and justice will go hand in hand as we work with police officers to reduce crime and create a Department of Community Safety that tackles the mental health crisis and homelessness crises head on. Excellence will become the expectation across government, not the exception. In this new age we make for ourselves, we will refuse to allow those who traffic in division and hate to pit us against one another. In this moment of political darkness, New York will be the light. Here, we believe in standing up for those we love, whether you are an immigrant, a member of the trans community, one of the many Black women that Donald Trump has fired from a federal job, a single mom still waiting for the cost of groceries to go down, or anyone else with their back against the wall. Your struggle is ours, too.”
Zohran Mamdani (born 1991) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And we will build a City Hall that stands steadfast alongside Jewish New Yorkers and does not waver in the fight against the scourge of antisemitism. Where the more than one million Muslims know that they belong — not just in the five boroughs of this city, but in the halls of power. No more will New York be a city where you can traffic in Islamophobia and win an election. This new age will be defined by a competence and a compassion that have too long been placed at odds with one another. We will prove that there is no problem too large for government to solve, and no concern too small for it to care about. For years, those in City Hall have only helped those who can help them. But on January 1st, we will usher in a city government that helps everyone.”
Zohran Mamdani (born 1991) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Together, we will usher in a generation of change. And if we embrace this brave new course, rather than fleeing from it, we can respond to oligarchy and authoritarianism with the strength it fears, not the appeasement it craves. After all, if anyone can show a nation betrayed by Donald Trump how to defeat him, it is the city that gave rise to him. And if there is any way to terrify a despot, it is by dismantling the very conditions that allowed him to accumulate power. This is not only how we stop Trump; it’s how we stop the next one. So, Donald Trump, since I know you’re watching, I have four words for you: Turn the volume up.”
Zohran Mamdani (born 1991) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I appreciated the meeting with the President and as he said, it was a productive meeting focused on a place of shared admiration and love, which is New York City — and the need to deliver affordability to New Yorkers, the eight and a half million who call our city their home who are struggling to afford life in the most expensive city in the United States of America. We spoke about rent, we spoke about groceries, we spoke about utilities. We spoke about the different ways in which people are being pushed out, and I appreciated the time with the president. I appreciated the conversation. I look forward to working together to deliver that affordability for New Yorkers.”
Zohran Mamdani (born 1991) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I think both President Trump and I, we are very clear about our positions and our views, and what I really appreciate about the President is the meeting that we had focused not on places of disagreement, which there are many, and also focused on the shared purpose that we have in serving New Yorkers, and frankly that is something that could transform the lives of the eight and a half million people who are currently struggling under a cost of living crisis with 1 in 4 living in poverty. And the meeting came back again and again to what it could look like to lift those New Yorkers out of struggle and start to deliver them a city that they could do more than just struggle to afford it but actually start to live in it.”
Zohran Mamdani (born 1991) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I do not stand alone. I stand alongside you, the tens of thousands gathered here in Lower Manhattan, warmed against the January chill by the resurgent flame of hope. … I stand alongside over one million New Yorkers who voted for this day nearly two months ago — and I stand just as resolutely alongside those who did not. I know there are some who view this administration with distrust or disdain, or who see politics as permanently broken. I stand alongside neighbors who carry a plate of food to the elderly couple down the hall, those in a rush who still lift strangers' strollers up subway stairs, and every person who makes the choice day after day, even when it feels impossible, to call our city home. And while only action can change minds, I promise you this: If you are a New Yorker, I am your mayor. Regardless of whether we agree, I will protect you, celebrate with you, mourn alongside you, and never, not for a second, hide from you.”
Zohran Mamdani (born 1991) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A moment like this comes rarely. Seldom do we hold such an opportunity to transform and reinvent. Rarer still is it the people themselves whose hands are the ones upon the levers of change. And yet we know that too often in our past, moments of great possibility have been promptly surrendered to small imagination and smaller ambition. What was promised was never pursued, what could have changed remained the same. For the New Yorkers most eager to see our city remade, the weight has only grown heavier, the wait has only grown longer. In writing this address, I have been told that this is the occasion to reset expectations, that I should use this opportunity to encourage the people of New York to ask for little and expect even less. I will do no such thing. The only expectation I seek to reset is that of small expectations. Beginning today, we will govern expansively and audaciously. We may not always succeed. But never will we be accused of lacking the courage to try.”
Zohran Mamdani (born 1991) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In a city where the mere names of our streets are associated with the innovation of the industries that call them home, we will make the words "City Hall" synonymous with both resolve and results. As we embark upon this work, let us advance a new answer to the question asked of every generation: Who does New York belong to? For much of our history, the response from City Hall has been simple: It belongs only to the wealthy and well-connected, those who never strain to capture the attention of those in power. Working people have reckoned with the consequences. Crowded classrooms and public housing developments where the elevators sit out of order. Roads littered with potholes and buses that arrive half an hour late, if at all. Wages that do not rise and corporations that rip off consumers and employees alike.”
Zohran Mamdani (born 1991) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This will not be a tale of one city, governed only by the one percent. Nor will it be a tale of two cities, the rich versus the poor. It will be a tale of eight and a half million cities, each of them a New Yorker with hopes and fears, each a universe, each of them woven together. The authors of this story will speak Pashto and Mandarin, Yiddish and Creole. They will pray in mosques, at shul, at church, at Gurdwaras and Mandirs and temples. And many will not pray at all. They will be Russian Jewish immigrants in Brighton Beach, Italians in Rossville, and Irish families in Woodhaven — many of whom came here with nothing but a dream of a better life, a dream which has withered away. They will be young people in cramped Marble Hill apartments where the walls shake when the subway passes. They will be Black homeowners in St. Albans whose homes represent a physical testament to triumph over decades of lesser-paid labor and redlining. They will be Palestinian New Yorkers in Bay Ridge, who will no longer have to contend with a politics that speaks of universalism and then makes them the exception.”
Zohran Mamdani (born 1991) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If our campaign demonstrated that the people of New York yearn for solidarity, then let this government foster it. Because no matter what you eat, what language you speak, how you pray, or where you come from, the words that most define us are the two we all share: New Yorkers. And it will be New Yorkers who reform a long-broken property tax system. New Yorkers who will create a new Department of Community Safety that will tackle the mental health crisis and let the police focus on the job they signed up to do. New Yorkers who will take on the bad landlords who mistreat their tenants and free small business owners from the shackles of bloated bureaucracy. And I am proud to be one of those New Yorkers. When we won the primary last June, there were many who said that these aspirations and those who held them had come out of nowhere. Yet one man's nowhere is another man's somewhere. This movement came out of eight and a half million somewheres — taxi cab depots and Amazon warehouses, D.S.A. meetings and curbside domino games. The powers that be had looked away from these places for quite some time — if they'd known about them at all — so they dismissed them as nowhere. But in our city, where every corner of these five boroughs holds power, there is no nowhere and there is no no one. There is only New York, and there are only New Yorkers.”
Zohran Mamdani (born 1991) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Two Sundays ago, as snow softly fell, I spent 12 hours at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, listening to New Yorkers from every borough as they told me about the city that is theirs. We discussed construction hours on the Van Wyck Expressway and E.B.T. eligibility, affordable housing for artists and ICE raids. I spoke to a man named TJ who said that one day a few years ago, his heart broke as he realized he would never get ahead here, no matter how hard he worked. I spoke to a Pakistani Auntie named Samina, who told me that this movement had fostered something too rare: softness in people's hearts. As she said in Urdu: logon ke dil badalgyehe. [people's hearts have changed] 142 New Yorkers out of eight and a half million. And yet, if anything united each person sitting across from me, it was the shared recognition that this moment demands a new politics, and a new approach to power. We will deliver nothing less as we work each day to make this city belong to more of its people than it did the day before.”
Zohran Mamdani (born 1991) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Here is what I want you to expect from the administration that this morning moved into the building behind me. We will transform the culture of City Hall from one of "no" to one of "how?" We will answer to all New Yorkers, not to any billionaire or oligarch who thinks they can buy our democracy. We will govern without shame and insecurity, making no apology for what we believe. I was elected as a democratic socialist and I will govern as a democratic socialist. I will not abandon my principles for fear of being deemed radical. As the great Senator from Vermont once said, "What's radical is a system which gives so much to so few and denies so many people the basic necessities of life.”
Zohran Mamdani (born 1991) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We will strive each day to ensure that no New Yorker is priced out of any one of those basic necessities. And throughout it all we will, in the words of Jason Terrance Phillips, better known as Jadakiss or J to the Muah, be "outside" — because this is a government of New York, by New York, and for New York. Before I end, I want to ask all of you, if you are able, whether you are here today or anywhere watching, to stand with me. I ask you to stand with us now, and every day that follows. City Hall will not be able to deliver on our own. And while we will encourage New Yorkers to demand more from those with the great privilege of serving them, we will encourage you to demand more of yourselves as well. The movement we began over a year ago did not end with our election. It will not end this afternoon. It lives on with every battle we will fight, together; every blizzard and flood we withstand, together; every moment of fiscal challenge we overcome with ambition, not austerity, together; every way we pursue change in working peoples' interests, rather than at their expense, together.”
Zohran Mamdani (born 1991) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No longer will we treat victory as an invitation to turn off the news. From today onward, we will understand victory very simply: something with the power to transform lives, and something that demands effort from each of us, every single day. What we achieve together will reach across the five boroughs and it will resonate far beyond. There are many who will be watching. They want to know if the left can govern. They want to know if the struggles that afflict them can be solved. They want to know if it is right to hope again. So, standing together with the wind of purpose at our backs, we will do something that New Yorkers do better than anyone else: We will set an example for the world. If what Sinatra said is true, let us prove that anyone can make it in New York — and anywhere else too. Let us prove that when a city belongs to the people, there is no need too small to be met, no person too sick to be made healthy, no one too alone to feel like New York is their home. The work continues, the work endures, the work, my friends, has only just begun.”
Zohran Mamdani (born 1991) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source