The flag of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (or flag of the CPLP) represents the intergovernmental organization for friendship among Lusophone (Portuguese-speaking) nations where Portuguese is an official language. The Portuguese language countries are home to more than 223 million people located across the globe. The CPLP nations have a combined area of about 10,772,000 square kilometres (4,159,000 sq mi). The CPLP was formed in 1996 with seven countries: Portugal, Brazil, a former colony in South America, and five former colonies in Africa — Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, and São Tomé and Príncipe. East Timor joined the community in 2002 after regaining independence from Indonesia. Senegal, Equatorial Guinea and Mauritius are associate members.
The flag symbolises the Portuguese-speaking countries' union: having a blue circle, divided into eight equal wavy shapes (the numbers of members of the CPLP) representing the sea (primary bond between the Community), at the center of a white field, in the center of which a small concentrical blue circle was placed representing the union.
Famous quotes containing the words flag of the, flag, community, language and/or countries:
“Swift blazing flag of the regiment,
Eagle with crest of red and gold,
These men were born to drill and die.
Point for them the virtue of slaughter,
Make plain to them the excellence of killing
And a field where a thousand corpses lie.”
—Stephen Crane (1871–1900)
“Up rose old Barbara Frietchie then,
Bowed with her fourscore years and ten;
Bravest of all in Frederick town,
She took up the flag the men hauled down;”
—John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892)
“... no community where more than one-half of the adults are disfranchised and otherwise incapacitated by law and custom, can be free from great vices. Purity is inconsistent with slavery.”
—Tennessee Claflin (1846–1923)
“Play for young children is not recreation activity,... It is not leisure-time activity nor escape activity.... Play is thinking time for young children. It is language time. Problem-solving time. It is memory time, planning time, investigating time. It is organization-of-ideas time, when the young child uses his mind and body and his social skills and all his powers in response to the stimuli he has met.”
—James L. Hymes, Jr. (20th century)
“The American adolescent, then, is faced, as are the adolescents of all countries who have entered or are entering the machine age, with the question: freedom from what and at what price? The American feels so rich in his opportunities for free expression that he often no longer knows what it is he is free from. Neither does he know where he is not free; he does not recognize his native autocrats when he sees them.”
—Erik H. Erikson (1904–1994)