Top 14 Most Famous Lee Kuan Yew Quotes (BEST)
“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 neighbor 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
“I ignore polling as a method of government. I think that shows a certain weakness of mind – an inability to chart a course whichever way the wind blows, whichever way the media encourages the people to go, you follow. 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
“You lose nothing by being polite. The answer is ‘No’, but please say it politely and give the reasons. Explain to me why ‘No’. Don’t change ‘No’ to ‘Yes’. Don’t be a fool. If there was a good reason why it is ‘No’, it must remain ‘No’, but the man must be told politely.”
Lee Kuan Yew
“Even from my sickbed, even if you are going to lower me into the grave and I feel that something is going wrong, I will get up. 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
“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
“You’re talking about Rwanda or Bangladesh, or Cambodia, or the Philippines. They’ve got democracy but have you got a civilized life to lead? People want economic development first and foremost. The leaders may talk something else. 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
“I’m very determined. If I decide what 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. That’s the business of a leader.”
Lee Kuan Yew
9 Thought-Provoking Lee Kuan Yew Quotes
“Mine is a very matter-of-fact approach to the problem. If you can select a population and they’re educated and they’re properly brought up, then you don’t have to use too much of the stick because they would already have been trained. It’s like with dogs. You train it in a proper way from small. It will know that it’s got to leave, go outside to pee and to defecate. No, we are not that kind of society. We had to train adult dogs who even today deliberately urinate in the lifts.”
Lee Kuan Yew
“I’m no longer in active politics. It’s irrelevant to me what young Singaporeans think of me. What they think of me after I’m dead and gone in one generation will be determined by researchers who do PhDs on me, right? So there will be a lot of revisionism. As people revised Stalin, Brezhnev and one day now Yeltsin, and later on Putin. I’ve lived long enough to know that you may be idealized in life and reviled after you’re dead.”
Lee Kuan Yew
“I have no regrets. I have spent my life, so much of it, building up this country. There’s nothing more that I need to do. At the end of the day, what have I got? A successful Singapore. What have I given up? My life.”
Lee Kuan Yew
“Change is the very essence of life. The moment we cease to change, to be able to adapt, to adjust, to respond effectively to new situations, then we have begun to die.”
Lee Kuan Yew
“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
2 Lee Kuan Yew Quotes on Education
“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
“Men are not born equal in either physical or mental capacity. But a socialist believes that society as a whole will benefit, and there will be more happiness for more people, if all are given equal opportunities for education and advancement regardless of class or property.”
Lee Kuan Yew
17 Lee Kuan Yew Quotes on Leadership
“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
“Political reform need not go hand in hand with economic liberalization. I do not believe that if you are libertarian, full of diverse opinions, full of competing ideas in the marketplace, full of sound and fury, therefore you will succeed.”
Lee Kuan Yew
“Repression can only go up to a point. When it becomes too acute, the instruments of repression, namely the army and the police, have been proved time and time again in history to have turned their guns on their masters.”
Lee Kuan Yew
“To straddle the middle ground and win elections, we have to be in charge of the political agenda. This can only be done by not being beaten in the argument with our critics. They complain that I come down too hard on their arguments. But wrong ideas have to be challenged before they influence public opinion and make for problems. Those who try to be clever at the expense of the government should not complain if my replies are as sharp as their criticisms.”
Lee Kuan Yew
“A nation is great not by its size alone. It is the will, the cohesion, the stamina, the discipline of its people and the quality of their leaders which ensure it an honorable place in history.”
Kuan Yew Lee
“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
“When people say, ‘Oh, ask the people!’, it’s childish rubbish. They say people can think for themselves? Do you honestly believe that the chap who can’t pass primary six knows the consequences of his choice when he answers a questions viscerally on language, culture and religion? We would starve, we would have race riots. We would disintegrate.”
Lee Kuan Yew
“I have never been over concerned or obsessed with opinion polls or popularity polls. I think a leader who is, is a weak leader. 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
“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
“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
3 Lee Kuan Yew Quotes on Democracy
“With few exceptions, democracy has not brought good government to new developing countries. What Asians value may not necessarily be what Americans or Europeans value. Westerners value the freedoms and liberties of the individual.”
Lee Kuan Yew
“But we either believe in democracy or we not. If we do, then, we must say categorically, without qualification, that no restraint from 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 naught.”
Lee Kuan Yew
9 Lee Kuan Yew Quotes on Singapore
“Singaporeans, if I can choose 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
“You know, the cure for all this talk is really a good dose of incompetent government. You get that alternative and you’ll never put Singapore together again: Humpty Dumpty cannot be put together again.”
Lee Kuan Yew
“Freedom of the press, freedom of the news media, must be subordinated to the overriding needs of the integrity of Singapore, and to the primacy of purpose of an elected government.”
Lee Kuan Yew
“When you’re Singapore’s leader and your existence depends on performance – extraordinary performance, better than your competitors – when that performance disappears because the system on which it’s been based becomes eroded, then you’ve lost everything. I try to tell the younger generation that and they say the old man is playing the same record, we’ve heard it all before. I happen to know how we got here and I know how we can unscramble it.” – On one freak election result ruining Singapore.”
Lee Kuan Yew
“I was also troubled by the apparent over-confidence of a generation that has only known stability, growth and prosperity. I thought our people should understand how vulnerable Singapore was and is, the dangers that beset us, and how we nearly did not make it. Most of all, I hope that they will know that honest and effective government, public order and personal security, economic and social progress did not come about as the natural course of events.”
Lee Kuan Yew
“We allow American journalists in Singapore in order to report Singapore to their fellow countrymen but we cannot allow them to assume a role in Singapore that the American media play in America. That of invigilator, adversary and inquisitor of the administration.”
Lee Kuan Yew
“The original communitarianism of Chinese Confucian society has degenerated into nepotism, a system of family linkages, and corruption, on the mainland. And remnants of the evils of the original system are still found in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and even Singapore.”
Lee Kuan Yew
3 Lee Kuan Yew Quotes on China
“Peace and security in the Asia-Pacific will turn on whether China emerges as a xenophobic, chauvinistic force, bitter and hostile to the West because it tried to slow down or abort its development, or whether it is educated and involved in the ways of the world – more cosmopolitan, more internationalized and outward looking.”
Lee Kuan Yew
“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
3 Lee Kuan Yew Quotes on Marriage
“At the end of the day, what I cherish most are the human relationships. With the unfailing support of my wife and partner I have lived my life to the fullest. It is the friendships I made and the close family ties I nurtured that have provided me with that sense of satisfaction at a life well lived, and have made me what I am.”
Lee Kuan Yew
“So when the graduate man does not want to marry a graduate woman, I tell him he’s a fool, stupid. You marry a non-graduate, you’re going to have problems, some children bright, some not bright. You’ll be tearing your hair out. you can’t miss.”
Lee Kuan Yew
2 Lee Kuan Yew Quotes on Business
“Of course, new technology’s greatest challenge is how to identify and develop potential winners. And this is difficult. There will be many failures. There will also be wrong bets but CEOs cannot make right bets without making wrong ones too. Those who make more correct bets than wrong ones, are the real winners.”
Lee Kuan Yew
14 Lee Kuan Yew Quotes That Will Make You Think
“We are pragmatists. We don’t stick to any ideology. Does it work? Let’s try it, and if it does work, fine, let’s continue it. If it doesn’t work, toss it out, try another one. We are not enamored with any ideology.”
Lee Kuan Yew
“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
“When I visited Madame Tussauds as a student in the 1940s. There were two groups of figures: the famous and the notorious, either British kings and famous leaders, or notorious murderers. I hope Madame Tussauds will not put my likeness too close to the notorious.”
Lee Kuan Yew
“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
“Because my posture, my response has been such that nobody doubts that if you take me on, I will put on knuckle-dusters and catch you in a cul-de-sac. If you think you can hurt me more than I can hurt you, try. There is no other way you can govern a Chinese society.”
Lee Kuan Yew
“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 she’s just called up to say she was alright.”
Lee Kuan Yew
“I think we were progressing very nicely until the surge of Islam came. And if you asked me for my observations, the other communities have easier integration — friends, inter-marriages and so on — than Muslims. I would say, today, we can integrate all religions and races except Islam.”
Lee Kuan Yew
“You can bargain for better wages, you can bargain for higher productivity bonuses. But once the bargain has been struck, then you must enter into the spirit of the agreement, and put in an honest day’s work for an honest day’s wage. There must be no fooling around, work means discipline. Singapore’s success depends on the spirit in which workers, management and government, all three, enter into the spirit of cooperation, necessary for prosperity.”
Lee Kuan Yew
(MUST READ) From Third World to First: The Singapore Story: 1965-2000
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