I’m not saying that everything I did was right, but everything I did was for an honourable purpose.
Please do not assume that you can change governments. Young people don’t understand this.
Having an education is one thing, being educated is another.
If you can’t force or are unwilling to force your people to follow you, with or without threats, you are not a leader.
I am not given to making sense out of life – or coming up with some grand narrative on it – other than to measure it by what you think you want to do in life. As for me, I have done what I had wanted to, to the best of my ability. I am satisfied.
A leader without the vision to strive to improve things is no good. Then you will just stay put, you won’t progress.
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.
The human being needs a challenge, and my advice to every person in Singapore and elsewhere: Keep yourself interested, have a challenge.
I always tried to be correct, not politically correct.
At the end of the day, what have I got? A successful Singapore. What have I given up? My life.
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.
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.