swords into ploughshares

swords into ploughshares

Make peace, not war. This expression comes from the Bible, when the prophet Isaiah has a vision in which people “shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks” (Isaiah 2:4). O. Henry played on this cliché (The Moment of Victory, 1909): “His bayonet beaten into a cheese slicer.” Opponents of the Vietnam War in the 1960s abandoned it altogether and invented the slogan, Make love, not war. See also: ploughshares, sword