Swords to ploughshares

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Let Us Beat Swords into Plowshares, a sculpture by Evgeniy Vuchetich in the United Nations Art Collection[1]

Swords to ploughshares is a concept in which military weapons or technologies are converted for peaceful civilian applications. The plowshare is often used to symbolize creative tools that benefit mankind, as opposed to destructive tools of war, symbolized by the sword, a similar sharp metal tool with an arguably opposite use. The common expression "beat swords into plowshares" has been used by disparate social and political groups. The term's origin is a number of biblical quotes:

  • Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruning hooks into spears: let the weak say "I am strong."Joel 3:10
  • They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.Isaiah 2:4 & Micah 4:3

One of the longest-running and most intricate efforts in this vein has been the project to develop power sources out of nuclear weapon technologies. Nuclear fission has been applied to many civilian purposes since its use at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but nuclear fusion requires further research before it can become practical to the same degree.

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[edit] List of notable cases

The Let Us Beat Swords into Plowshares statue at United Nations headquarters, New York.

[edit] References in popular culture

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.
  • The popular anti-war song "The Vine and Fig Tree" repeats the verse [2]
"And everyone neath their vine and fig tree
shall live in peace and unafraid,
Everyone neath their vine and fig tree
shall live in peace and unafraid.
And into ploughshares beat their swords
Nations shall learn war no more.
And into ploughshares beat their swords
Nations shall learn war no more."
In the garden of the Lord.
They will walk behind the ploughshare,
They will put away the sword.
The chain will be broken
And all men will have their reward. — Finale of the musical Les Misérables
  • The Don Henley song The End of the Innocence contains the line: They're beating plowshares into swords, for the tired old man that we elected king (a reference to then-President Ronald Reagan).
  • The Stephen Stills song Feed the People includes the line: Turn your swords to ploughshares everywhere, and feed the people.
  • The phrase beat their swords into plowshares is the motto of the World Ploughing Association.

[edit] Quotes

  • "Those who beat their swords into plowshares will end up plowing for those who did not." -Anonymous
  • And they'll beat swords into ploughshares and ploughshares into swords, and so on and so on, and back and forth. 'Sort of An Apocalypse', Yehuda Amichai, 1958

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