Leadership Quote by Félix Houphouët-Boigny

“Peace is not a word, it is behavior” is a rebuke disguised as civics. Houphouet-Boigny, a head-of-state who built his legitimacy on stability, isn’t offering a feel-good slogan; he’s drawing a line between performance and practice. The phrasing demotes “peace” from an abstract noun you can recite to a set of repeatable actions you can be judged on. In a political world where leaders sign accords, pose for photographs, and declare “national reconciliation” while running patronage machines or security crackdowns, the sentence functions like a moral audit: show me your habits, not your vocabulary.

The construction matters. “Not a word” targets rhetoric itself: the easy temptation to treat language as substitute for responsibility. Then the pivot - “it is behavior” - relocates peace into the body: how soldiers treat civilians, how police handle dissent, how parties accept election outcomes, how elites distribute resources, how neighbors talk when the microphones are off. It’s a definition with teeth because behavior is measurable. It implies accountability and repetition, not a one-time ceremony.

Context sharpens the edge. As president of Cote d’Ivoire through decolonization and Cold War turbulence, Houphouet-Boigny became associated with a model of order and economic growth that many contrasted with coups and civil wars elsewhere. The subtext is both aspirational and self-justifying: peace as a national brand, but also a warning that the brand collapses when daily governance slips into coercion, exclusion, or humiliation. Peace, he argues, isn’t declared. It’s enacted.