Singapore Quotes - Page 2

• Singapore and China, which don't want to encourage democratic citizenship, are expanding their humanities curricula. These reforms are all about developing a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship.

  Martha C. Nussbaum

  Humanity, Innovation, Reform

  Source: www.neh.gov

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• In that - and that is my personal view - Singapore delivers the most value, as they think about Formula One as a complete entertainment event, on and off track.

  Martin Sorrell

  Thinking, Views, Track

  Source: www.formula1.com

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Whoever governs Singapore must have that iron in him. Or give it up. This is not a game of cards. This is your life and mine. I've spent a whole lifetime building this and as long as I'm in charge, nobody is going to knock it down.

  Mr. Lee

  Games, Iron, Long

  "Singapore's founding father Lee Kuan Yew dies at 91". www.bbc.com. March 23, 2015.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• What I fear is complacency. When things always become better, people tend to want more for less work.

  Lee Kuan Yew

  Inspiring, People, Want

  26 Copy quote

• My colleagues and I are of that generation of young men who went through the Second World War and the Japanese Occupation and emerged determined that no one–neither Japanese nor British–had the right to push and kick us around.  We determined that we could govern ourselves and bring up our children in a country where we can be proud to be self-respecting people.

  Lee Kuan Yew

  Country, Children, War

  9 Copy quote

• We have over a hundred political detainees, men against whom we are unable to prove anything in a court of law. Nearly 50 of them are men who gave us a great deal of anxiety during the years of Confrontation because they were Malay extremists. Your life and this dinner would not be what it is if my colleagues and I had decided to play it according to the rules of the game.

  Lee Kuan Yew

  Men, Games, Play

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  Needs, Enough, Sanguine

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  Believe, Hands, Ideas

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  Army, Years, Two

  "Lee Kuan Yew defends PAP's Political Dominance". Reuters, September 16, 2006.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• If it is not totalitarian to arrest a man and detain him, when you cannot charge him with any offence against any written law – if that is not what we have always cried out against in Fascist states – then what is it?… If we are to survive as a free democracy, then we must be prepared, in principle, to concede to our enemies – even those who do not subscribe to our views – as much constitutional rights as you concede yourself.

  Lee Kuan Yew

  Men, Law, Rights

  Legislative Assembly Debates, September 21, 1955.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  Political, Facts, Movement

  23 Copy quote

• If you care too much about Singapore, first it'll break your spirit, and finally it will break your heart.

  Alfian Sa'at

  Heart, Care, Too Much

  7 Copy quote

• There is nothing to prevent you from pushing your propaganda, to push your programme out to the students or with the public at large…and if you can carry the ground, if you are right, you win. That’s democracy.

  Lee Kuan Yew

  Winning, Democracy, Pushing

  11 Copy quote

• 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

  Stupid, People, Support

  National Day Rally, 1983.

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• I’m not interested in changing either my suit or my car or whatever with every change in fashion. That’s irrelevant. I don’t judge myself or my friends by their fashions. Of course, I don’t approve of people who are sloppy and unnecessarily shabby or dishevelled… But I’m not impressed by a US$5,000 or US$10,000 Armani suit.

  Lee Kuan Yew

  Fashion, Judging, Car

  Lee Kuan Yew (2013). “The Wit & Wisdom of Lee Kuan Yew”, p.148, Editions Didier Millet

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• We must encourage those who earn less than $200 per month and cannot afford to nurture and educate many children never to have more than two… We will regret the time lost if we do not now take the first tentative steps towards correcting a trend which can leave our society with a large number of the physically, intellectually and culturally anaemic.

  Lee Kuan Yew

  Regret, Children, Numbers

  Presenting the Abortion Bill, sprs.parl.gov.sg. December 23, 1969.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• I am often accused of interfering in the private lives of citizens. Yes, if I did not, had I not done that, we wouldn't be here today. And I say without the slightest remorse, that we wouldn't be here, we would not have made economic progress, if we had not intervened on very personal matters - who your neighbour is, how you live, the noise you make, how you spit, or what language you use. We decide what is right. Never mind what the people think.

  Lee Kuan Yew

  Thinking, People, Mind

  Straits Times, April 20, 1987.

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  People, Priorities, Survival

  20 Copy quote

• Anybody who decides to take me on needs to put on knuckle-dusters. If you think you can hurt me more than I can hurt you, try. There is no way you can govern a Chinese society.

  Lee Kuan Yew

  Hurt, Thinking, Chinese

  "Lee Kuan Yew: The Man and His Ideas". Book by Han Fook Kwang, Warren Fernandez, Sumiko Tan, 1997.

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

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

  Lee Kuan Yew

  Government, People, Assuming

  "Singapore's Founding Father Lee Kuan Yew Critically Ill" by Anna Fifield, www.smh.com.au. March 19, 2015.

  36 Copy quote

  Show source

• If you are a troublemaker, it’s our job to politically destroy you. Put it this way. As long as JB Jeyaretnam stands for what he stands for – a thoroughly destructive force – we will knock him. Everybody knows that in my bag I have a hatchet, and a very sharp one. You take me on, I take my hatchet, we meet in the cul-de-sac.

  Lee Kuan Yew

  Jobs, Long, Way

  "Lee Kuan Yew: The Man and His Ideas". Book by Fook Kwang Han, Sumiko Tan, and Warren Fernandez, 1998.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I started off believing all men were equal. I now know that's the most unlikely thing ever to have been, because millions of years have passed over evolution, people have scattered across the face of this earth, been isolated from each other, developed independently, had different intermixtures between races, peoples, climates, soils... I didn't start off with that knowledge. But by observation, reading, watching, arguing, asking, that is the conclusion I've come to.

  Lee Kuan Yew

  Believe, Reading, Men

  "Lee Kuan Yew: The Man and His Ideas". Book by Han Fook Kwang, Warren Fernandez, Sumiko Tan, 1997.

  38 Copy quote

  Show source

• I am often accused of interfering in the private lives of citizens. Yes, if I did not, had I not done that, we wouldn't be here today.

  Lee Kuan Yew

  Inspiring, Citizens, Done

  The Straits Times, April 20, 1987.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• But we either believe in democracy or we don't. If we do, then, we must say categorically, without qualification, that no restraint from the any democratic processes, other than by the ordinary law of the land, should be allowed. If you believe in democracy, you must believe in it unconditionally. If you believe that men should be free, then, they should have the right of free association, of free speech, of free publication. Then, no law should permit those democratic processes to be set at nought.

  Lee Kuan Yew

  Believe, Men, Law

  Legislative Assembly Debates, April 27, 1955.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• I pointed to an article with bold headlines reporting that the police had refused to allow the PAP to hold a rally at Empress Place, and then to the last paragraph where in small type it added the meeting would take place where we were now. I compared this with a prominent report about an SPA rally. This was flagrant bias.

  Lee Kuan Yew

  Police, Lasts, Empresses

  Lee Kuan Yew (2015). “The Singapore Story (Student Edition): Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew”, p.154, Marshall Cavendish International Asia Pte Ltd

  6 Copy quote

  Show source