Georgia State Motto: Wisdom, Justice, Moderation

Georgia's state motto is Wisdom, Justice, Moderation. The three words were adopted in 1776 by Georgia's Second Provincial Congress as part of the Great Seal. Each word appears on one of the three pillars that support the arch inscribed "Constitution" at the center of the seal, tying a virtue directly to a branch of government.

The motto predates the U.S. Constitution by eleven years. Georgia's founders built it into the seal at a moment when written constitutions were a new and radical idea, and when the state was simultaneously fighting the Revolutionary War and drafting its own founding document.

Georgia's Second Provincial Congress adopted the state seal — and the motto within it — in 1776. The same year, Georgia's delegates signed the Declaration of Independence and the colony began drafting its first state constitution. No single designer of the seal is named in surviving legislative records.

The seal's core composition has not changed since 1776: three pillars, a constitutional arch, a soldier with a drawn sword, the motto divided across the pillars, and the date 1776 at the bottom. The legislature revised the seal in 1799 to standardize the rendering, and again in 1914 to codify the authoritative version in statute.

Georgia ratified the United States Constitution on January 2, 1788, becoming the fourth state to do so. By that date, Georgia's motto had already been on the state seal for eleven years. The current authorized form is defined in the Official Code of Georgia Annotated § 50-3-30.