Raimundo Teixeira Mendes was born in Caxias, in the state of Maranhão, on January 5, 1855. Brazilian philosopher and mathematician, he founded the Igreja and Apostolado Positivista with his brother-in-law Miguel Lemos in 1881. Teixeira Mendes is also credited with creating the national motto, “Order and Progress,” as well as the Brazilian flag in which it appears, in 1889. Teixeira Mendes published numerous pamphlets to promote Positivism and support issues such as republicanism, labor laws, animal rights, the secularization of cemeteries, and the separation between Church and State. In1905, he assumed the leadership of the Igreja Positivista do Brasil, but did not abandon his title as vice-director until Lemos’s death in 1917. Teixeira Mendes died in 1927 in Rio de Janeiro.