The best quotes from Zohran Mamdani’s victory speech

Mamdani’s victory speech was unsurprisingly emotional, rousing, and poetic.

Here is a collection of the best moments.

Mamdani started by thanking New York.

“On January 1, 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 those so often forgotten by the politics of our city, who made this movement their own. I speak of Yemeni bodega owners and Mexican abuelas. Senegalese taxi drivers and Uzbek nurses. Trinidadian line cooks and Ethiopian aunties. Yes, aunties. To every New Yorker in Kensington and Midwood and Hunts Point, know this: This city is your city, and this democracy is yours too.”

Mamdani mentioned Richard, a taxi driver whose relationship with Zohran went viral after an appearance on Keep The Meter Running with Kareem Rahma.

“And it’s about people like Richard, the taxi driver I went on a 15-day hunger strike with outside of City Hall, who still has to drive his cab seven days a week. My brother, we are in City Hall now.”

He made a message to the working class.

“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 – Tonight, against all odds, we have grasped it. The future is in our hands, my friends, we have toppled a political dynasty.”

Mamdani addressed the criticisms against him.

“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.”

In the cheekiest moment of the speech, Mamdani quotes Andrew Cuomo’s father. 

“A great New Yorker once said that while you campaign in poetry, you govern in prose.”

Mamdani made his view on immigration clear.

“New York will remain a city of immigrants: a city built by immigrants, powered by immigrants and, as of tonight, led by an immigrant.

Of course, Mamdani was always going to have to address Donald Trump. 

“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.”

He also addressed MAGA politics as a whole.

“They want the people to fight amongst ourselves so that we remain distracted from the work of remaking a long-broken system. We refuse to let them dictate the rules of the game anymore. They can play by the same rules as the rest of us.”

The newly elected mayor didn’t mince words when standing up for minorities. 

“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.”

Mamdani said he would usher in a new age for New York.

“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.”

Mamdani chose an interesting politician to quote. 

“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.””

Mamdani gave hisfirst instruction, ‘breathe’.

“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.”

Mamdani’s election signifies a shift in American politics. With the setting some comes the dawn of a new day.

“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.”