if you want peace, prepare for war
if you want peace, prepare for war proverb: visibly preparing for a fight can deter one's enemies from opening hostilities, by not giving the appearance of an easy target.
Proverb
if you want peace, prepare for war
- Visibly preparing for a fight can deter one's enemies from opening hostilities, by not giving the appearance of an easy target.
Origin of if you want peace, prepare for war
Calque of Latin sī vīs pācem, parā bellum, an adage adapted from a statement found in 4th century AD Roman author Vegetius's tract De re militari, in which the actual phrasing is igitur quī dēsīderat pācem, praeparet bellum (“therefore let him who desires peace prepare for war”).
Questions about if you want peace, prepare for war
- What does if you want peace, prepare for war mean?
- If you want peace, prepare for war means visibly preparing for a fight can deter one's enemies from opening hostilities, by not giving the appearance of an easy target.
- What part of speech is if you want peace, prepare for war?
- If you want peace, prepare for war is a proverb.
Words near if you want peace, prepare for war in the dictionary
- if you say so
- if you see something, say something
- if you see what I mean
- if you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything
- if you want a thing done well, do it yourself
- if you want peace, prepare for war
- if you will
- if you're not Dutch, you're not much
- if you've got it, flaunt it
- if you've seen one, you've seen them all
- if your only tool is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: if you want peace, prepare for war (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “if you want peace, prepare for war.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/if_you_want_peace%2C_prepare_for_war. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.