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, 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)
“My dream is that as the years go by and the world knows more and more of America, it ... will turn to America for those moral inspirations that lie at the basis of all freedom ... that America will come into the full light of the day when all shall know that she puts human rights above all other rights, and that her flag is the flag not only of America but of humanity.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“The most perfect political community must be amongst those who are in the middle rank, and those states are best instituted wherein these are a larger and more respectable part, if possible, than both the other; or, if that cannot be, at least than either of them separate, so that being thrown into the balance it may prevent either scale from preponderating.”
—Aristotle (384–322 B.C.)
“I am both a public and a private school boy myself, having always changed schools just as the class in English in the new school was taking up Silas Marner, with the result that it was the only book in the English language that I knew until I was eighteen—but, boy, did I know Silas Marner!”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“[N]o combination of dictator countries of Europe and Asia will halt us in the path we see ahead for ourselves and for democracy.... The people of the United States ... reject the doctrine of appeasement.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)