Virginia State Motto: Sic Semper Tyrannis

Virginia's state motto is Sic Semper Tyrannis, a Latin phrase meaning Thus Always to Tyrants. The Virginia Convention adopted the state seal — with the motto at the bottom — in 1776, the same year Virginia declared independence from Britain.

The motto is one of the oldest in the United States. It was part of Virginia's official identity from the first days of the American Revolution and has appeared on the seal and the state flag ever since.

The Virginia Convention adopted the Great Seal of Virginia in 1776, the same year Virginia became the first of the thirteen colonies to adopt a state constitution. George Wythe, a Virginia lawyer and signer of the Declaration of Independence who later served as Thomas Jefferson's law teacher, is credited with designing the seal and choosing the motto.

The motto was written at a moment when Virginia's leaders saw the American Revolution as exactly the kind of struggle the phrase described: a people casting off tyranny. The seal's design made that argument in visual form, and the Latin motto gave it a classical weight that Virginia's founders valued.

The phrase entered wider public consciousness on April 14, 1865, when John Wilkes Booth reportedly shouted it after shooting President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre in Washington. Booth was from Maryland, not Virginia, but the phrase he chose was Virginia's state motto. The event gave the motto a second, darker layer of association that has followed it ever since.