Rest on laurels? I wish I could do that. No, you rest when you're dead Lee Kuan Yew More Quotes by Lee Kuan Yew More Quotes From Lee Kuan Yew 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 daughter worry son The same law applies to me. Nobody has sued me for libel because I do not defame my enemies. Lee Kuan Yew libel law enemy 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 idealised in life and reviled after you’re dead. Lee Kuan Yew long people thinking 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 realist liberty freedom 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 pushing democracy winning 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 writing book lying 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 I started off believing all men were equal. I now know that's the most unlikely thing ever to have been... But by observation, reading, watching, arguing, asking, that is the conclusion I've come to. Lee Kuan Yew bullying reading believe 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 two years 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 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 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 inspiring jobs war 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 rights law men 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 home writing jobs 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 car fashion judging They say, oh, let’s have multiparty politics. Let’s have different parties change and be in charge of the Government. Is it that simple? You vote in a Division Three government, not a Division One government, and the whole economy will just subside within three, four years. Finished. Lee Kuan Yew party simple years 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 citizens done inspiring If nobody is afraid of me, I'm meaningless. Lee Kuan Yew meaningless ifs You’re talking about Rwanda or Bangladesh, or Cambodia, or the Philippines. They’ve got democracy, according to Freedom House. But have you got a civilised 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 home jobs school 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 analogies add inspiring
