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.
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.
Between being loved and being feared, I have always believed Machiavelli was right. If nobody is afraid of me, I’m meaningless.
I don’t believe in love at first sight. I think it’s a grave mistake.
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.
What I fear is complacency. When things always become better, people tend to want more for less work.
If you deprive yourself of outsourcing and your competitors do not, you’re putting yourself out of business.
What is of consequence is I did my best.
I do not yet know of a man who became a leader as a result of having undergone a leadership course.
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.
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.
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.
I have decided that we shall make and build and never give way.
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 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.
We decide what is right. Never mind what the people think.
You marry a non-graduate, then you are going to worry if your son or daughter is going to make it to the university.
If I have to shoot 200,000 students to save China from another 100 years of disorder, so be it.
Now if democracy will not work for the Russians, a white Christian people, can we assume that it will naturally work with Asians?
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.