Non nobis solum is a Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

 motto

Motto

A motto is a phrase meant to formally summarize the general motivation or intention of a social group or organization. A motto may be in any language, but Latin is the most used. The local language is usual in the mottoes of governments...

. A common variation is non nobis, sed omnibus ("not for us, but for everyone"). It means that people should contribute to the general greater good of humanity, apart from their own interests.

The motto is derived from a sentence in Cicero

Cicero

Marcus Tullius Cicero , was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.He introduced the Romans to the chief...

's most influential philosophical work, his treatise On Duties (Latin: De Officiis

De Officiis

De Officiis is an essay by Marcus Tullius Cicero divided into three books, in which Cicero expounds his conception of the best way to live, behave, and observe moral obligations.- Origin :...

). In full, Cicero writes, non nobis solum nati sumus ortusque nostri partem patria vindicat, partem amici ("We are not born, we do not live for ourselves alone; our country, our friends, have a share in us"), Cicero de officiis, 1:22. The sentence, as Cicero himself says, is a literal translation of a sentiment from Plato

Plato

Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...

's Letter to Archytas. Cicero associates this concept with the Stoic

Stoicism

Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded in Athens by Zeno of Citium in the early . The Stoics taught that destructive emotions resulted from errors in judgment, and that a sage, or person of "moral and intellectual perfection," would not suffer such emotions.Stoics were concerned...

 ideal of cosmopolitanism

Cosmopolitanism

Cosmopolitanism is the ideology that all human ethnic groups belong to a single community based on a shared morality. This is contrasted with communitarian and particularistic theories, especially the ideas of patriotism and nationalism...

, according to which all men have a natural kinship with all other men and need to "contribute to the general good by an interchange of acts of kindness (officia), by giving and receiving" (De officiis 1.22, transl. Walter Miller

Walter Miller (philologist)

Samuel Walter Miller, LL. D., Litt. D. was an American linguist, Classics scholar and archaeologist responsible for the first American excavation in Greece and a founder of the Stanford University Classics department....

, 1913).

The motto is used by numerous organizations, including schools and military units.