Lee Kuan Yew Quotes

India is scared of the competition ... because Chinese goods will go into India and compete.

A leader without the vision, to strive to improve things, is no good. Then you will just stay put, you won't progress.

If there was one formula for our success,it was that we were constantly studying how to make things work,or how to make them work better.

I'm not intellectually convinced that one-man, one-vote is the best. We practise it because that's what the British bequeathed us

The exuberance of democracy leads to undisciplined and disorderly conditions which are inimical to development.

I have been accused of many things in my life, but not even my worst enemy has ever accused me of being afraid to speak my mind.

Usually I read biographies of interesting people. I am not attracted to novels - make-believe, or recreations of what people think life should be,

If Singapore is a nanny state, then I am proud to have fostered one.

Please do not assume that you can change governments. Young people don't understand this

If Aljunied decides to go that way, well Aljunied has five years to live and repent.

You need a certain standard of literacy, moral and ethical values, to be able to run a one man, one vote system.

At the end of the day, what have I got? A successful Singapore. What have I given up? My life.

China is a vast, disparate country; there is no alternative to strong central power.

If I have to shoot 200,000 students to save China from another 100 years of disorder, so be it.

I have decided that we shall make and build and never give way.

Freedom of the news media must be subordinated to the overriding needs of Singapore, and to the primacy of purpose of an elected government.

I make no apologies that the PAP is the Government and the Government is the PAP.

I wish I can meet my wife in the hereafter, but I don't think I will. I just cease to exist just as she has ceased to exist.

One-man-one-vote is a most difficult form of government.. Results can be erratic.

The human being needs a challenge, and my advice to every person in Singapore and elsewhere: Keep yourself interested, have a challenge.

If you can't force or are unwilling to force your people to follow you, with or without threats, you are not a leader.

Nine holes of golf will take you one-and-a-half, two hours. I run in 20 minutes, I feel better off. So the cost benefit made me drop golf.

I believe that life is a process of continuous change and a constant struggle to make that change one for the better.

Every person, genius or moron, has a right to reproduce himself.

I would not score very highly on religious value.

Rest on laurels? I wish I could do that. No, you rest when you're dead

As you solve one set of problems, new ones appear. That is part of the nature of life.

I always tried to be correct, not politically correct.

I do not yet know of a man who became a leader as a result of having undergone a leadership course.

If you want to reach your goals and dreams, you cannot do it without discipline

Without the elected president and if there is a freak result, within two or three years, the army would have to come in and stop it

You take a poll of any people. What is it they want? The right to write an editorial as you like? They want homes, medicine, jobs, schools.

If you can't think because you can't chew, try a banana.

You marry a non-graduate, then you are going to worry if your son or daughter is going to make it to the university.

what they had endured

Between being loved and being feared, I have always believed Machiavelli was right. If nobody is afraid of me, I'm meaningless.

Having an education is one thing, being educated is another.

I'm not saying that everything I did was right, but everything I did was for an honourable purpose.

You either use the Internet or you are backward.

I am ... a realist. The magnitude of what one terms license or civil liberties or personal freedom has got to be adjusted to the circumstances.

Even from my sick bed, even if you are going to lower me into the grave and I feel something is going wrong, I will get up.

Start with putting three of your friends to jail. You definitely know what for, and people will believe you

The problem is to keep the monkey mind from running off into all kinds of thoughts.

If you are going to lower me into the grave, and I feel something is wrong, I will get up.

Now if democracy will not work for the Russians, a white Christian people, can we assume that it will naturally work with Asians?

If you deprive yourself of outsourcing and your competitors do not, you're putting yourself out of business.

The same law applies to me. Nobody has sued me for libel because I do not defame my enemies.

The Japanese high command recognised the sexual needs of the men and provided for them. As a consequence, rape was not frequent.