Top 100 Kuan Yew Quotes
#1. On the way back from Mumbai to go meet with President Xi in China, I stopped in Singapore to meet with a guy named Lee Kuan Yew, who most foreign policy experts around the world say is the wisest man in the Orient.
Joe Biden
#3. I think we have a good foundation which Mr. Lee Kuan Yew laid down, but you have to move forward. Now the question is what can Mr. Lee Hsien Loong and his team, and all our younger ministers can do now to build on the foundation which Mr. Lee Kuan Yew has built.
Tony Tan
#4. I'm very determined. If I decide that something is worth doing, then I'll put my heart and soul to it. The whole ground can be against me, but if I know it is right, I'll do it.
Lee Kuan Yew
#5. Those who believe that after I have left the government as prime minister, I will go into a permanent retirement, really should have their heads examined.
Lee Kuan Yew
#6. I support the view that free trade in goods and services is a win-win situation. I'm not so convinced that free flows of capital without restriction is a win-win situation.
Lee Kuan Yew
#7. You either use the Internet or you are backward.
Lee Kuan Yew
#8. I would not score very highly on religious value.
Lee Kuan Yew
#9. The same law applies to me. Nobody has sued me for libel because I do not defame my enemies.
Lee Kuan Yew
#10. Freedom of the news media must be subordinated to the overriding needs of Singapore, and to the primacy of purpose of an elected government.
Lee Kuan Yew
#11. If you want to reach your goals and dreams, you cannot do it without discipline
Lee Kuan Yew
#12. After trying out a number of ways to reduce inequalities and failing, I was gradually forced to conclude that the decisive factors were the people, their natural abilities, education and training. Knowledge and the possession of technology were vital for the creation of wealth.
Lee Kuan Yew
#13. 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.
Lee Kuan Yew
#14. At the end of the day, what have I got? A successful Singapore. What have I given up? My life.
Lee Kuan Yew
#15. Now if democracy will not work for the Russians, a white Christian people, can we assume that it will naturally work with Asians?
Lee Kuan Yew
#16. The task of the leaders must be to provide or create for them a strong framework within which they can learn, work hard, be productive and be rewarded accordingly. And this is not easy to achieve.
Lee Kuan Yew
#17. Please do not assume that you can change governments. Young people don't understand this
Lee Kuan Yew
#18. Harry was a bright boy. And like many bright boys, he had a little mischief in him.
Patrick Yee
#19. I'm reaching 87, trying to keep fit, presenting a vigorous figure, and it's an effort, and is it worth the effort? I laugh at myself trying to keep a bold front. It's become my habit. I just carry on.
Lee Kuan Yew
#20. In the West, especially after World War II, the government came to be seen as so successful that it could fulfill all the obligations that in less modern societies are fulfilled by the family.
Lee Kuan Yew
#21. A leader without the vision, to strive to improve things, is no good. Then you will just stay put, you won't progress.
Lee Kuan Yew
#22. There are some flaws in the assumptions made for democracy. It is assumed that all men and women are equal or should be equal. Hence, one-man-one-vote. But is equality realistic? If it is not, to insist on equality must lead to regression.
Lee Kuan Yew
#23. You need a certain standard of literacy, moral and ethical values, to be able to run a one man, one vote system.
Lee Kuan Yew
#24. Of-course we did, but we didn't reply because we knew once this leaks the others will scatter, so in the few days we moved quickly before the press got hold of it. The press did get hold of it a few days later, we nabbed, we were able to get 15, the others got away.
Lee Kuan Yew
#25. You marry a non-graduate, then you are going to worry if your son or daughter is going to make it to the university.
Lee Kuan Yew
#26. The human being is an unequal creature. That is a fact. And we start off with the proposition. All the great religions, all the great movements, all the great political ideology, say let us make the human being as equal as possible. In fact, he is not equal, never will be.
Lee Kuan Yew
#27. Every person, genius or moron, has a right to reproduce himself.
Lee Kuan Yew
#28. I believe that life is a process of continuous change and a constant struggle to make that change one for the better.
Lee Kuan Yew
#29. That was the year the British decided to get out and sell everything. So I immediately held an election. I knew the people will be dead scared. And I won my bet big-time. The gullible fools!
Lee Kuan Yew
#30. The Japanese high command recognised the sexual needs of the men and provided for them. As a consequence, rape was not frequent.
Lee Kuan Yew
#31. Between being loved and being feared, I have always believed Machiavelli was right. If nobody is afraid of me, I'm meaningless.
Lee Kuan Yew
#32. As you solve one set of problems, new ones appear. That is part of the nature of life.
Lee Kuan Yew
#33. My children were educated in what were then Chinese schools, and they learned English as a subject. But they made up when they went to English-language universities. So they didn't lose out. They had a basic set of traditional Confucian values. Not my grandchildren.
Lee Kuan Yew
#34. The First World became a popular phrase in about the 1970s and '80s. The World Bank then began categorizing countries in different categories, advanced to the least developed.
Lee Kuan Yew
#35. Usually I read biographies of interesting people. I am not attracted to novels - make-believe, or recreations of what people think life should be,
Lee Kuan Yew
#36. Singaporeans, if I can chose an analogy, we are the hard disk of a computer, the foreign talent are the megabytes you add to your storage capacity. So your computer never hangs because you got enormous storage capacity.
Lee Kuan Yew
#37. Countries that are agricultural can, at a low standard of living, sustain themselves. You can be self-sufficient; the money economy is a relatively insignificant part of the total economy. Singapore never was an agricultural country.
Lee Kuan Yew
#38. Rest on laurels? I wish I could do that. No, you rest when you're dead
Lee Kuan Yew
#39. In the East, the main object is to have a well-ordered society so that everybody can have maximum enjoyment of his freedoms. This freedom can only exist in an ordered state and not in a natural state of contention and anarchy.
Lee Kuan Yew
#40. We have to lock up people, without trial, whether they are communists, whether they are language chauvinists, whether they are religious extremists. If you don't do that, the country would be in ruins.
Lee Kuan Yew
#41. All my life ... I believed in Malaysian merger and unity of the two territories. You know that we, as a people, are connected by geography, economics, by ties of kinship.
Lee Kuan Yew
#42. Well if done a lot of hard work to try and get people to act rationally, the fact that weve had 15 deviant Muslims, plus 5 or 8 others that got away does not mean that all Muslims are deviant or extremists.
Lee Kuan Yew
#43. The problem is to keep the monkey mind from running off into all kinds of thoughts.
Lee Kuan Yew
#44. Life is not just eating, drinking, television and cinema ... The human mind must be creative, must be self-generating ; it cannot depend on just gadgets to amuse itself.
Lee Kuan Yew
#45. China can draw on a talent pool of 1.3 billion people, but the United States can draw on a talent pool of 7 billion and recombine them in a diverse culture that enhances creativity in a way that ethnic Han nationalism cannot.
Lee Kuan Yew
#46. If Aljunied decides to go that way, well Aljunied has five years to live and repent.
Lee Kuan Yew
#47. 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.
Lee Kuan Yew
#48. I was a product of the times, the war, the occupation, the reoccupation, my 4 years in Britain, admiring but at the same time questioning whether they are able to do a better job than we can.
Lee Kuan Yew
#49. 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.
Lee Kuan Yew
#50. The ultimate test of the value of a political system is whether it helps that society to establish conditions which improve the standard of living for the majority of its people.
Lee Kuan Yew
#51. Start with putting three of your friends to jail. You definitely know what for, and people will believe you
Lee Kuan Yew
#52. If you deprive yourself of outsourcing and your competitors do not, you're putting yourself out of business.
Lee Kuan Yew
#53. I knew that my niece was working nearby with some bank, so my wife rang up the mother and the mother called back to say that shes just called up to say she was alright.
Lee Kuan Yew
#54. I feel sanguine enough to say that there has never been a better set of conditions for open democratic politics because there is no need for unified front politics.
Lee Kuan Yew
#55. I'm not intellectually convinced that one-man, one-vote is the best. We practise it because that's what the British bequeathed us
Lee Kuan Yew
#56. Any time, every time, you can damn the Prime Minister and so long as it is not a lie and a criminal lie, nothing happens to you. You can say a lot of things. You can write books about him, damning him. So long as it is not a libel, go ahead.
Lee Kuan Yew
#57. For reasons of sentiment, I would like part of my ashes to be mixed up with Mama's, and both her ashes and mine put side by side in the columbarium. We were joined in life and I would like our ashes to be joined after this life.
Lee Kuan Yew
#58. I am not given to making sense out of life - or coming up with some grand narrative on it - other than to measure it by what you think you want to do in life. As for me, I have done what I had wanted to, to the best of my ability. I am satisfied.
Lee Kuan Yew
#59. The exuberance of democracy leads to undisciplined and disorderly conditions which are inimical to development.
Lee Kuan Yew
#60. If you don't include your women graduates in your breeding pool and leave them on the shelf, you would end up a more stupid society ... So what happens? There will be less bright people to support dumb people in the next generation. That's a problem.
Lee Kuan Yew
#61. You begin your journey not knowing where it will take you. You have plans, you have dreams, but every now and again you have to take uncharted roads, face impassable mountains, cross treacherous rivers, be blocked by landslides and earthquakes. That's the way my life has been.
Lee Kuan Yew
#62. I make no apologies that the PAP is the Government and the Government is the PAP.
Lee Kuan Yew
#63. I always tried to be correct, not politically correct.
Lee Kuan Yew
#64. Having an education is one thing, being educated is another.
Lee Kuan Yew
#65. China is a vast, disparate country; there is no alternative to strong central power.
Lee Kuan Yew
#66. The acid test of any legal system is not the greatness or the grandeur of its ideal concepts, but whether, in fact, it is able to produce order and justice.
Lee Kuan Yew
#67. He took over, and he said: 'If I have to shoot 200,000 students to save China from another 100 years of disorder, so be it.'" - Recalling how former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping dealt with the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests
Lee Kuan Yew
#68. From 1945 to 1991, China was engaged in a series of wars that nearly broke them. This generation has been through hell: the Great Leap Forward, hunger, starvation, near collision with the Russians - the Cultural Revolution gone mad. I have no doubt that this generation wants a peaceful rise.
Lee Kuan Yew
#69. If I have to shoot 200,000 students to save China from another 100 years of disorder, so be it.
Lee Kuan Yew
#70. 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.
Lee Kuan Yew
#71. Most libels, and I have taken about 30 actions, take place at election time. It has not stuck because I am prepared to go before a court, stand in the witness box and face the most aggressive of lawyers who can cross-examine me on my personal history.
Lee Kuan Yew
#72. If you are going to lower me into the grave, and I feel something is wrong, I will get up.
Lee Kuan Yew
#73. India is scared of the competition ... because Chinese goods will go into India and compete.
Lee Kuan Yew
#74. It's irrelevant to me what young Singaporeans think of me. I've lived long enough to know that you may be idealised in life and reviled after you're dead.
Lee Kuan Yew
#76. For the young, let me tell you the sky has turned brighter. There's a glorious rainbow that beckons those with the spirit of adventure. And there are rich findings at the end of the rainbow. To the young and to the not-so-old, I say, look at that horizon, follow that rainbow, go ride it.
Lee Kuan Yew
#77. It is not the practice, now will I allow subversives to get away by insisting that I've got to prove everything against them in a court of law or [produce] evidence that will stand up to the strict rules of evidence of a court of law.
Lee Kuan Yew
#78. The big nest was in Afghanistan, thats not quite cleared, then there are nests in the Philippines, there are nests in Indonesia, the Malaysians are clearing up their nests.
Lee Kuan Yew
#79. If you can't think because you can't chew, try a banana.
Lee Kuan Yew
#80. America's greatest long-term influence on China comes from playing host to the thousands of students who come from China each year, some of the ablest Chinese scholars and scientists. They will be the most powerful agents for change in China.
Lee Kuan Yew
#81. 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.
Lee Kuan Yew
#82. One-man-one-vote is a most difficult form of government.. Results can be erratic.
Lee Kuan Yew
#83. I do not yet know of a man who became a leader as a result of having undergone a leadership course.
Lee Kuan Yew
#84. If Singapore is a nanny state, then I am proud to have fostered one.
Lee Kuan Yew
#85. China is not going to become a liberal democracy; if it did, it would collapse. I do not believe you can impose on other countries standards which are alien and totally disconnected with their past.
Lee Kuan Yew
#86. If I were in authority in Singapore indefinitely without having to ask those who are governed whether they like what is being done, then I would not have the slightest doubt that I could govern much more effectively in their interests.
Lee Kuan Yew
#87. 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.
Lee Kuan Yew
#88. I have decided that we shall make and build and never give way.
Lee Kuan Yew
#89. I have always thought that humanity was animal-like. The Confucian theory was man could be improved, but I'm not sure he can be. He can be trained; he can be disciplined.
Lee Kuan Yew
#90. If you can't force or are unwilling to force your people to follow you, with or without threats, you are not a leader.
Lee Kuan Yew
#91. 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
Lee Kuan Yew
#92. As an East Asian looking at America, I find attractive and unattractive features. I like, for example, the free, easy and open relations between people regardless of social status, ethnicity or religion.
Lee Kuan Yew
#93. I think in Singapore, we stand a chance of making the one-man-one-vote system work. With amendments as we have done, you know, like GRCs.. We need to make it work. And I believe with pragmatic adjustments, given these favourable conditions, we can have more open debate.
Lee Kuan Yew
#94. Political reform need not go hand in hand with economic liberalization.. I hold unconventional views about this.. I do not believe if you are a libertarian, full of diverse opinions, full of competing ideas in the market place, full of sound and fury, therefore you will succeed.
Lee Kuan Yew
#95. I wouldn't call myself an atheist. I neither deny nor accept that there is a God. So I do not laugh at people who believe in God. But I do not necessarily believe in God - nor deny that there could be one.
Lee Kuan Yew
#96. 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.
Lee Kuan Yew
#97. I'm not saying that everything I did was right, but everything I did was for an honourable purpose.
Lee Kuan Yew
#98. What are our priorities? First, the welfare, the survival of the people. Then, democratic norms and processes which from time to time we have to suspend.
Lee Kuan Yew
#99. President Nixon was a pragmatic strategist. He would engage, not contain, China, but he would also quietly set pieces into place for a fallback position should China not play according to the rules as a good global citizen.
Lee Kuan Yew
#100. The human being needs a challenge, and my advice to every person in Singapore and elsewhere: Keep yourself interested, have a challenge.
Lee Kuan Yew
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