Audemus jura nostra defendere

Marker near Huntsville, Alabama

Audemus jura nostra defendere (Latin "We Dare To Defend Our Rights" or "We Dare To Maintain Our Rights") is the state motto of Alabama, depicted on a yellow ribbon below the coat of arms and completed in 1923.

Its original source is in lines of "An Ode in Imitation of Alcaeus" (published 1781), known also by its first line, "What constitutes a State?") by the eighteenth-century liberal English philologist Sir William Jones, which included the lines

Men, who their duties know,

But know their rights, and, knowing, dare maintain,

Prevent the long-aim'd blow,

And crush the tyrant while they rend the chain: [...]

The words were adjusted by the director of the State Archives, Marie Bankhead Owen, and translated into Latin by Dr. W. B. Saffold, of the University of Alabama.

See also

• States' rights

References

• Sir William Jones's Ode and the 1738 preface to Milton's Areopagitica