Royal Society a compliment to Lord Brouncker, a peer and the first President of the Royal Society. The society's motto, "Nullius in verba", is Latin for "Take nobody's word for it". It was adopted to signify the fellows' determination to establish facts via experiments and comes from Horace's "Epistles", where he compares himself to a gladiator who, having retired, is free from control. The society's core members are the fellows: scientists and engineers from the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth selected based on having made "a substantial contribution to the improvement of natural knowledge, including mathematics, engineering science and medical science". Fellows
Verba volant, scripta manent to put it in writing, rather than just having an oral agreement. It could also refer to the subsequent increase in recalling words that are written down than those that are merely spoken or thought about. Verba volant, scripta manent Verba volant, scripta manent is a Latin proverb. Literally translated, it means "spoken words fly away, written words remain". This apparently much older anonymous proverb seems to have been quoted in a speech of the Emperor Titus to the Roman Senate; the general meaning is that spoken words might easily be forgotten but written documents can always be relied on