Decoding Colorado’s State Motto: A Look at Conflicting Translations

Each of the United States has its own symbols and motto. For example, Colorado’s state flower is the Columbine, the state bird is the lark bunting, and its state animal is the Bighorn Sheep.

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While these symbols are pretty well accepted as common knowledge, the state’s motto is much more confusing, and its meaning has been debated for years.

What is Colorado’s State Motto?

The state motto of Colorado, which appears on the state’s official seal and the seldom-used coat of arms, is the Latin phrase Nil sine numine. The phrase appears in a book by the ancient Roman poet Virgil called the Aeneid on line 777.

The phrase was adopted by Colorado on November 6, 1861, after it was suggested by then-Secretary of the Treasury L.L. Weld to the first Territorial Governor, William Gilpin.
The first two words are easily translatable, but it’s the third word where conflicting accounts have been debated upon.

What Does Colorado’s State Motto Mean?

The first two words, nil and sine, translate directly to the words “nothing” and “without.”
However, the third word, numine, can have a number of different meanings. Some of the possible meanings include the phrases “nothing without Providence,” “nothing without God,” “nothing without the deity,” and “nothing without the divine will.”

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While these possibilities are all similar in nature, it has been said that in the mining days of Colorado’s infancy, it was said that a number of non-religious Coloradans believed that the phrase meant “nothing without a new mine,” with little to nothing to support the claim.