State Motto of Vermont

State Motto of Vermont

The Official State Motto of Vermont is “Freedom and Unity”. The Vermont State Motto Was Adopted in 1779. The State Motto appears on Vermont’s coat of arms, state seal, the state flag, and the U.S. Mint’s commemorative quarter for Vermont. There is general agreement that Vermont State Motto is about the idea of balancing two seemingly opposite ideals: the personal freedom and independence of the individual citizen, with the common good of the larger community.

Writer and Vermont resident Dorothy Canfield Fisher wrote the following about her adopted state: “the Vermont idea grapples energetically with the basic problem of human conduct – how to reconcile the needs of the group, of which every man or woman is a member, with the craving for individual freedom to be what he really is.” These two forces have mostly endured in Vermont’s history, both freedom, and unity, expressing distinct parts of the Vermont identity. State Motto of Vermont is believed to have been the inspiration for Daniel Webster’s famous Liberty and Union speech before the United States Senate.

The use of the exact motto is found in two quite different political groups. The left-center Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) used the motto Freedom and Unity before World War II. In the United Kingdom, a right-center party, the English Democratic Party which seeks the protection of English culture and opposing European unity, also uses the exact motto. The current national motto of Germany, adopted by the Federal Republic of Germany in 1952, is also quite similar to Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit translating as Unity and Justice and Freedom. The coat of arms of the Swiss canton of Vaud reads “Liberté et Patrie” – freedom and fatherland.

 

NICKNAME

“The Green Mountain State”

This nickname is a derivation of the description made by early French explorers of the Green Mountains of Vermont.

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