“We have hitherto but hunted deer; if we engage in this war, we must prepare to fight tigers.”
Quoted in p. 460 in Prinsep, Henry Thoby (1825). History of the political and military transactions in India during the administration of the Marquess of Hastings, 1813-1823, Vol 1. London: Kingsbury, Parbury & Allen. https://books.google.com/books?id=Tq1jAAAAMAAJ&source=gbs_navlinks_s
Quote
Context: They will not rest satisfied without establishing their own power and authority, and will unite with the hill rajas, whom we have dispossessed. We have hitherto but hunted deer; if we engage in this war, we must prepare to fight tigers.
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Amar Singh Thapa 4
Supreme Commander of the Western Front of Nepal 1751–1816Related quotes

“We must be prepared to pay the price for peace, or assuredly we shall pay the price of war.”
Special Message to the Congress on the Threat to the Freedom of Europe (1948)
Context: The recommendations I have made represent the most urgent steps toward securing the peace and preventing war. We must be ready to take every wise and necessary step to carry out this great purpose. This will require assistance to other nations. It will require an adequate and balanced military strength. We must be prepared to pay the price for peace, or assuredly we shall pay the price of war. We in the United States remain determined to seek peace by every possible means, a just and honorable basis for the settlement of international issues.

Books, Islam and the West: A Conversation with Bernard Lewis (2006)

Source: Call of Duty: My Life Before, During and After the Band of Brothers (2008), p. 250

2009, Nobel Prize acceptance speech (December 2009)
Context: Let me make one final point about the use of force. Even as we make difficult decisions about going to war, we must also think clearly about how we fight it.
Disputed, Give me liberty, or give me death! (1775)

As quoted in Clemenceau and the Third Republic (1946) by John Hampden Jackson.
Prime Minister

“If you have not noticed, we are preparing for war. I’m sorry if that inconveniences you.”
Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, The Dragonbone Chair (1988), Chapter 34, “Forgotten Swords” (p. 549).