For reasons of sentiment, I would like part of my ashes to be mixed up with Mama’s, and both her ashes and mine put side by side in the columbarium. We were joined in life and I would like our ashes to be joined after this life.
If you want to reach your goals and dreams, you cannot do it without discipline.
You begin your journey not knowing where it will take you. You have plans, you have dreams, but every now and again you have to take uncharted roads, face impassable mountains, cross treacherous rivers, be blocked by landslides and earthquakes. That’s the way my life has been.
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.