Academy Coat of Arms
Designed in 1898 by professors Larned, Bass, and Tillman, the original design was nearly identical to the current, but was oriented to the right. In 1923, the coat of arms was oriented to the left to conform to more traditional conventions of heraldry. Some of the older buildings on post still bear the original, right-oriented version. The shield is topped by the American Bald Eagle and the Academy's motto of "Duty, Honor, Country" and "West Point MDCCCII USMA" which is the date of USMA's founding. The helmet is that of Pallas Athena, for centuries a symbol of wisdom and learning. The sword is a traditional emblem of the military.
Read more about this topic: History Of United States Military Academy
Famous quotes containing the words academy, coat and/or arms:
“When the State wishes to endow an academy or university, it grants it a tract of forest land: one saw represents an academy, a gang, a university.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Essential truth, the truth of the intellectualists, the truth with no one thinking it, is like the coat that fits tho no one has ever tried it on, like the music that no ear has listened to. It is less real, not more real, than the verified article; and to attribute a superior degree of glory to it seems little more than a piece of perverse abstraction-worship.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“His eloquence was of every kind, and he excelled in the argumentative as well as in the declamatory way. But his invectives were terrible, and uttered with such energy of diction, and stern dignity of action and countenance, that he intimidated those who were the most willing and the best able to encounter him. Their arms fell out of their hands, and they shrunk under the ascendant which his genius gained over theirs.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)