Live Free or Die

Instead, he sent his toast by letter:[2] By the time Stark wrote this, Vivre Libre ou Mourir ("Live free or die") was a popular motto of the French Revolution and was required as an oath of office for all legislators for the duration of the Constitution of 1791.

[3] A possible source of such mottoes is Patrick Henry's famed March 23, 1775, speech to the House of Burgesses (the legislative body of the Virginia colony), which contained the following phrase: "Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?

That spurred "a battle between state power to compel citizens to display a message they disagreed with and determined dissenters willing to resist, even to the point of going to jail for their beliefs," according to the Valley News of West Lebanon, N.H. As the war wound down, the issue faded, but erupted again in November 1974.

"[8] In 1977, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 7-2in the case of Wooley v. Maynard, 430 U.S. 705, that the state of New Hampshire could not prosecute motorists who chose to hide part or all of the motto.

A medal struck at Matthew Boulton's Soho Mint, as tokens of exchange for the Paris firm of Monneron Freres, 1791–1792, has on its obverse the motto Vivre libres ou mourir ("Live free or die" in French).

The phrase "Antes morrer livres que em Paz sujeitos" (English: Rather die free than in peace be subjugated) is contained in a 1582 letter reply to King Philip II of Spain from the Portuguese governor of the Azores, Ciprião de Figueiredo.

The Declaration of Arbroath of 1320, the document in which the Scottish nobility appealed to Pope John XXII to recognise Scotland's independence from England, contains an oft-cited line, "It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom – for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself."

The popularity dates to the 1980s, when Armando Stettner of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) had a set of Unix license plates printed up and given away at a USENIX conference.