War & Peace Quote by Yahya Jammeh

Peace and freedom, in Jammeh's framing, are not rights you possess so much as rewards you earn. The line dresses itself up as civic wisdom, but its real force is transactional: if you want stability, you will pay for it in toil, discipline, and tolerance. That trio sounds wholesome until you notice how elastic it is. "Discipline" can mean self-control in a plural society; it can also mean obedience to authority. "Tolerance" can mean living with difference; it can also be a demand to swallow dissent quietly for the sake of calm. The grammar even slips into coercion: "will be to live by toil" reads like a decree rather than an invitation, the future tense functioning as a soft threat.

The intent is to claim the moral high ground while shifting responsibility downward. If peace fails, the implication goes, it is because citizens weren't disciplined enough, didn't work hard enough, weren't tolerant enough. It's a classic governing move: convert political outcomes into personal virtues, so the state becomes the referee of character rather than the manager of institutions.

Context matters. Jammeh's long rule in The Gambia was marked by a tightly controlled public sphere, frequent allegations of repression, and a strongman style that treated order as a personal achievement. In that light, the quote works less as a national pep talk and more as a manual for compliance: freedom is promised, but only after the population demonstrates the behavior the ruler prefers. The subtext is simple: peace is available, but on my terms.