Only Unity Saves the Serbs (more literally Only Concord Saves a Serb, Serbian: Само слога Србина спасава/Samo sloga Srbina spasava) is an unofficial motto used in Serbia and a popular slogan among Serbs, often used as a rallying call against foreign domination and during times of national crisis.
The phrase is an interpretation of what is taken to be four Cyrillic letters for "S" (written С) on the Serbian cross. These symbols are more commonly known to be "firesteels" (Serbian: оцила / ocila, and were taken from Byzantine heraldry in the Late Middle Ages.
Popular tradition attributes the motto St. Sava (12th century) the first Metropolitan of Žiča and Archbishop of Serbs of the Serbian Orthodox Church. According to the story, St. Sava called for the creation of an independent church in Serbia that would remain Orthodox, and uttered the phrase to urge the Serbian people to declare national autonomy and resist domination by the Roman Catholic Church.
The Serbian cross symbol has been frequently used in Serb heraldry.
The memorial park in Tekeriš, where the first battle of the Great War was fought, the monument has "18-VIII - 1914" and "Samo sloga srbina spasava" inscribed. A monument in Šamac, Republika Srpska, Bosnia-Herzegovina for the Serbs who fought and died in the Bosnian war, has the Serbian eagle in the center, the years which the war occurred (1992-1995) and the Serbian slogan: "Samo Sloga Srbina Spasava" on the left and right sides.
Famous quotes containing the words unity and/or saves:
“Certainly for us of the modern world, with its conflicting claims, its entangled interests, distracted by so many sorrows, so many preoccupations, so bewildering an experience, the problem of unity with ourselves in blitheness and repose, is far harder than it was for the Greek within the simple terms of antique life. Yet, not less than ever, the intellect demands completeness, centrality.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)
“Obedience to authority saves many skins.”
—Sophocles (497–406/5 B.C.)