National Mottos
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50 free National Mottos trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
A country motto is a nation's shortest speech. Some fit on a coin, some are stitched into a flag, and a few are a single word. Behind each one sits a story: a revolt, a psalm, a medieval battle cry, a poem written seven centuries ago, or a contest won by schoolchildren. This quiz covers country mottos from every continent. You will match well-known lines to the nations that use them, work out what the Latin and other old phrases mean, and meet the kings, presidents and philosophers who coined them. A few questions look at vanished states and at mottos that are older than the countries they now belong to. It is built for geography fans, pub quiz regulars, teachers and anyone who has ever wondered what the words on a passport or a banknote actually say. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you leave knowing the story as well as the motto.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which country's Latin motto, A mari usque ad mare, means From Sea to Sea and comes from Psalm 72?
Canada
Canada took the phrase from Psalm 72:8 when its coat of arms was redesigned in 1921. In 2007 the three territorial premiers asked for a third sea, to count the Arctic coast.
Q 02Which Latin phrase was the unofficial US motto until In God We Trust became official in 1956?
E pluribus unum
E pluribus unum, meaning out of many, one, has sat on the Great Seal since 1782. Its thirteen letters match the thirteen colonies that became the first states.
Q 03Which country, born of a slave revolt, shares France's motto Liberty, Equality, Fraternity?
Haiti
Haiti names the three words as its national motto in its constitution. Its coat of arms carries a different line, about unity.
Q 04Botswana's one-word motto, Pula, also the name of its currency, means what in Setswana?
Rain
Rain is so scarce in Botswana, home to much of the Kalahari Desert, that the word doubles as a wish for blessing or fortune. Three wavy lines on the coat of arms stand for it.
Q 05Switzerland's unofficial motto, One for all, all for one, was made famous by which Dumas novel?
The Three Musketeers
The Three Musketeers made the line famous in 1844, and the Swiss took it up in 1868 to rally aid after floods in the Alps. Its Latin form is written inside the dome of the Federal Palace.
Q 06Which country's flag carries its motto, Order and Progress, on a band across a starry blue globe?
Brazil
Brazil borrowed the words from the French philosopher Auguste Comte, whose positivist creed set order as the basis and progress as the goal. A 2021 campaign tried to add love to the flag.
Q 07In God We Trust first appeared on United States coins, on a two-cent piece, during which conflict?
The Civil War
The Civil War was still being fought when the two-cent piece of 1864 first carried the words. They did not become the official national motto for another 92 years.
Q 08Which country's flag has nine stripes said to match the syllables of its motto, Freedom or Death?
Greece
Greece took the motto from the war cry of its 1820s revolt against Ottoman rule. In the original wording, five blue stripes cover the first word and four white stripes the rest.
Q 09Scotland's Latin motto, No One Provokes Me with Impunity, first referred to which national plant?
Thistle
Thistle spines, legend says, made a Viking raider cry out in the dark and alert the Scots before the Battle of Largs in 1263. The motto runs round the rim of some one pound coins.
Q 10Which organization chose its motto, United in Diversity, through a contest among 80,000 students?
European Union
European Union students from the then 15 member countries entered the contest, and the winning line was adopted in 2000. Its Latin form is In varietate concordia.
Q 11Which country's motto, Plus ultra, appears with the Pillars of Hercules on its coat of arms?
Spain
Spain inherited the motto from Emperor Charles V, who turned around an old warning said to mark the edge of the known world: nothing further beyond. The motto means further beyond.
Q 12Which Caribbean country replaced a Latin motto with Out of Many, One People at independence in 1962?
Jamaica
Jamaica chose the line as a tribute to the unity of its many cultural minorities. The Latin motto it dropped, dating from colonial rule, had spoken of two peoples serving one lord.
Q 13Which country's motto, Unity in Diversity, sits on a scroll gripped by the mythical bird Garuda?
Indonesia
Q 21Which country's presidential flag carries the motto Truth Prevails, linked to the reformer Jan Hus?
Czech Republic
The Czech Republic inherited the motto from Tomáš Masaryk, who adopted it in 1918 as the first president of Czechoslovakia. From 1990 to 1992 the banner carried it in Latin as a neutral compromise.
Q 22Which small country's motto, drawn from an 1859 railway song, means We Want to Remain What We Are?
Luxembourg
Luxembourg took the line from De Feierwon, a patriotic song written to honour the country's first international railway. It voices the people's wish to keep their independence and identity.
Q 23Which country took Unity Makes Strength as its national motto after winning independence in 1830?
Belgium
Indonesia took the phrase, Bhinneka Tunggal Ika, from a 14th-century Old Javanese poem that urged tolerance between Hindus and Buddhists. It was written into the constitution in 2000.
Q 14Which country's one-word motto, Harambee, comes from a Swahili call meaning all pull together?
Kenya
Kenya's first president, Jomo Kenyatta, used the word to rally the new nation after independence in 1963. It is thought to have begun as a chant of porters lifting heavy loads.
Q 15The Soviet state motto, Workers of the world, unite, was a rallying cry from which 1848 pamphlet?
The Communist Manifesto
The Communist Manifesto of 1848, by Marx and Engels, gave the Soviet state emblem its slogan. Flora Tristan had used the phrase in a book of her own five years earlier.
Q 16SPQR, the motto of the Roman Republic, names the people of Rome alongside which governing body?
The Senate
The Senate comes first in the full phrase, Senatus Populusque Romanus. Rome still uses the four letters on its municipal coat of arms and in official city documents.
Q 17Which country's flag carries its motto, the Islamic declaration of faith, in white above a sword?
Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia's green flag pairs the creed with a sword that stands for safety and justice. Because the creed is holy, the flag is never lowered to half-mast in mourning.
Q 18Which president signed the 1956 law that made In God We Trust the official United States motto?
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight D. Eisenhower signed it on July 30, 1956, a year after approving a law that put the phrase on all American currency. The first note to carry it was a one-dollar silver certificate.
Q 19Which country's unofficial motto, Unity and Justice and Freedom, opens verse three of its anthem?
Germany
Germany sings only that third verse as its national anthem, so the motto begins every performance. The words are also inscribed on army belt buckles and the rims of some coins.
Q 20Dieu et mon droit, the British monarch's motto, is said to have begun as which king's battle cry?
Richard the Lionheart
Richard the Lionheart is said to have shouted it, God and my right, when he beat the French king at Gisors in 1198. Henry V later made it the royal motto of England.
Belgium first used the motto only in French, adding a Dutch version once that language gained equal status. The unity it had in mind joined nine provinces, and liberals with Catholics.
Q 24Which country's motto, Faith, Unity, Discipline, was laid down by its founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah?
Pakistan
Pakistan adopted the motto in 1948 and added it to the national emblem in 1954, at first in both Urdu and Bengali. Jinnah had pressed the three words on the country's youth.
Q 25Which country's Sanskrit motto declares that mother and motherland are greater than heaven?
Nepal
Nepal carries the line on a red scroll at the base of its emblem. Tradition gives the words to the hero Rama, who in one telling says that even golden Lanka does not tempt him.
Q 26Singapore's motto, Majulah Singapura, is written in which of the country's four official languages?
Malay
Malay is Singapore's national language, and the motto, meaning Onward Singapore, is also the title of the national anthem. It runs in gold on a blue ribbon beneath a lion and a tiger.
Q 27India's national motto, Satyameva Jayate, is drawn from which body of ancient Hindu scripture?
The Upanishads
The Upanishads supply the line, from a mantra in the Mundaka Upanishad that means truth alone triumphs. India adopted it on 26 January 1950, the day it became a republic.
Q 28Which Andean country's motto, added to its coat of arms in 1920, means By Reason or Force?
Chile
Chile shows the motto on a white band under a shield held up by a condor and a huemul, a native deer. Both animals wear golden naval crowns, a salute to the navy's deeds in the Pacific.
Q 29Which Central American country's Latin motto means For the Benefit of the World?
Panama
Panama swapped its motto, Pro mundi beneficio, for Justice, Honor and Freedom in 1941, then went back to the old one five years later. A harpy eagle, the national bird, tops the coat of arms.
Q 30Iraq's flag carries which phrase, also the national motto, meaning God is the greatest?
Allahu Akbar
Allahu Akbar was added between the flag's stars by Saddam Hussein in January 1991, reportedly in his own handwriting. A later redesign kept the words but set them in traditional Kufic script.