Lee Kuan Yew Quotes

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

We decide what is right. Never mind what the people think.

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.

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.

I don't believe in love at first sight. I think it's a grave mistake.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Whoever governs Singapore must have that iron in him. Or give it up. This is not a game of cards.

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.

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

If nobody is afraid of me, I'm meaningless.

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

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

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.

What is of consequence is I did my best.

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.

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

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

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

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

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