Lee Kuan Yew citations (72 citations)

Lee Kuan Yew: 72 citations 0 J'aime

Lee Kuan Yew: Citations en anglais

“Political reform need not go hand in hand with economic liberalisation. I do not believe that if you are libertarian, full of diverse opinions, full of competing ideas in the market place, full of sound and fury, therefore you will succeed.”

Help us translate this quote

Lee Kuan Yew

Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, Straits Times, Aug 17, 2004
2000s

“And now in America itself after 30 years of experimenting with the Great Society programmes, there is widespread crime and violence, children kill each other with guns, neigbourhoods are insecure, old people feel forgotten, families are falling apart. And the media attacks the integrity and character of your leaders with impunity, drags down all those in authority and blames everyone but itself.”

Help us translate this quote

Lee Kuan Yew

Lee Kuan Yew, Interview with Nathan Gardels of Global Viewpoint, Sept 26 1995 http://www.nas.gov.sg/archivesonline/data/pdfdoc/017-1995-09-26.pdf
1990s

“But we either believe in democracy or we don't. If we do, then, we must say categorically, without qualification, that no restraint from the any democratic processes, other than by the ordinary law of the land, should be allowed… If you believe in democracy, you must believe in it unconditionally. If you believe that men should be free, then, they should have the right of free association, of free speech, of free publication. Then, no law should permit those democratic processes to be set at nought, and no excuse, whether of security, should allow a government to be deterred from doing what it knows to be right, and what it must know to be right…”

Help us translate this quote

Lee Kuan Yew

Lee Kuan Yew, Legislative Assembly Debates, April 27, 1955
1950s

“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.”

Help us translate this quote

Lee Kuan Yew

Opposition leader Lee Kuan Yew, Legislative Assembly Debates, Sept 21, 1955
1950s

“I have visited (Burma) and I know that there is only one instrument of government, and that is the army…If I were Aung San Suu Kyi, I think I'd rather be behind a fence and be a symbol than after two or three years, be found impotent.”

Help us translate this quote

Lee Kuan Yew

SM Lee Kuan Yew, Reuters, Jun 6, 1996, which sparked a flurry of protests from Burmese students.
1990s

“… If you can't think because you can't chew, try a banana”

Help us translate this quote

Lee Kuan Yew

2000. Lee was responding to a BBC reporter who suggested that Singapore's draconian laws (including the ban on chewing gum) could stifle the people's creativity. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/820234.stm
2000s

“At the end of the day, if you are in Aljunied, ask yourself: Do you want one MP, one Non-Constituency MP, one celebrity who has been away 30 years, and two unknowns to look after you? Or would you prefer me and my hand-picked colleagues?”

Help us translate this quote

Lee Kuan Yew

assessment on the alternative Workers' Party candidates contesting in the Aljunied GRC for General Elections 2011 (Yahoo News, April 30, 2011, http://sg.news.yahoo.com/aljunied-voters-will-regret-choosing-wp--mm-lee.html)
2010s

“Malays abhor the state of celibacy. To remain unmarried was and is considered shameful. Everyone must be married at some time or other. The result is that whether a person is fit or unfit for marriage, he or she still marries and reproduces. An idiot or a simpleton is often married off to an old widower, ostensibly to take care of him in his old age. If this is not possible, backward relatives are paired off in marriage. These people survive, reproduce and propagate their species. The cumulative effect of this can be left to the imagination.”

Help us translate this quote

Lee Kuan Yew

[Barr, Michael D., Lee Kuan Yew: Race, Culture and Genes, Journal of Contemporary Asia, 1999, 29 2, 147, https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/5058/d1bc358fe18944e8aaa399e422f74d0fed75.pdf]
1980s

“I started off believing all men were equal. I now know that's the most unlikely thing ever to have been, because millions of years have passed over evolution, people have scattered across the face of this earth, been isolated from each other, developed independently, had different intermixtures between races, peoples, climates, soils… I didn't start off with that knowledge. But by observation, reading, watching, arguing, asking, that is the conclusion I've come to.”

Help us translate this quote

Lee Kuan Yew

Lee Kuan Yew, The Man & His Ideas, 1997
1990s

“Whoever governs Singapore must have that iron in him. Or give it up. This is not a game of cards! This is your life and mine! I've spent a whole lifetime building this and as long as I'm in charge, nobody is going to knock it down.”

Help us translate this quote

Lee Kuan Yew

Rally in 1980, related to the then-ongoing Singapore Airlines pilot strikes due to salary issue http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-32012346
1980s

“What role would men and governments in new countries like the mass media to play?… The mass media can help to present Singapore's problems simply and clearly and then explain how if they support certain programmes and policies these problems can be solved. More important, we want the mass media to reinforce, not to undermine, the cultural values and social attitudes being inculcated in our schools and universities.”

Help us translate this quote

Lee Kuan Yew

Address To The General Assembly Of The International Press Institute At Helsinki Wednesday, 9th June, 1971 http://journalism.sg/lee-kuan-yews-1971-speech-on-the-press/
1970s

“Ministers who deal with billions of dollars cannot be paid low salaries without risking a system malfunction. Low salaries will not attract able men who are or can be successful in their professions or business. Low salaries will draw in the hypocrites who sweet talk their way into power in the name of public services, but once in charge will show their true colour, and ruin the country. This has happened in many countries.”

Help us translate this quote

Lee Kuan Yew

SM Lee Kuan Yew, Speech to the National Trade Union Congress at the Singapore Conference Hall, 19 July 1996 https://fcpp.org/pdf/SPEECH%20BY%20MR%20LEE%20KUAN%20YEW%202004.pdf
1990s

“I have said this on many a previous occasion: that had the mix in Singapore been different, had it been 75% Indians, 15% Malays and the rest Chinese, it would not have worked. Because they believe in the politics of contention, of opposition. But because the culture was such that the populace sought a practical way out of their difficulties, therefore it has worked.”

Help us translate this quote

Lee Kuan Yew

[President's Address, Debate on President's Address, Parliament of Singapore, http://sprs.parl.gov.sg/search/topic.jsp?currentTopicID=00062986-ZZ&currentPubID=00069476-ZZ&topicKey=00069476-ZZ.00062986-ZZ_1%2Bid005_19850301_S0005_T00051-president-address%2B, March 01 1985, January 16 2015]
1980s

“Once emotions are set in motion, and men pitted against men along these unspoken lines, you will have the kind of warfare that will split the nation from top to bottom and undo Malaysia. Everybody knows it. I don't have to say it. It is the unspoken word!”

Help us translate this quote

Lee Kuan Yew

Lee Kuan Yew in the Parliament of Malaysia, 1965 http://www.jeffooi.com/archives/2005/11/i_went_into_act.php
1960s

“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”

Help us translate this quote

Lee Kuan Yew

MM Lee Kuan Yew on what would happen if a profligate opposition government touched Singapore's vast monetary reserves, "Lee Kuan Yew defends PAP's Political Dominance", Reuters, 16 September 2006
2000s

“I bent over a chair and was given three of the best with my trousers on. I did not think he lightened his strokes. I have never understood why Western educationists are so much against corporal punishment. It did my fellow students and me no harm.”

Help us translate this quote

Lee Kuan Yew

The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew, 1998
1990s

“If I were in authority in Singapore indefinitely without having to ask those who are governed whether they like what is being done, then I have not the slightest doubt that I could govern much more effectively in their interests.”

Help us translate this quote

Lee Kuan Yew

Radio Interview, 1960. Quoted in South-East Asia: A Political Profile, Damien Kingsbury (2001, p. 337)
1960s

“How does the Malay in the kampong find his way out into this modernised civil society? By becoming servants of the 0.3 per cent who would have the money to hire them to clean their shoe, open their motorcar doors?”

Help us translate this quote

Lee Kuan Yew

Lee Kuan Yew in the Parliament of Malaysia, 1965 http://maddruid.com/?p=645
1960s

“Let us get down to fundamentals. Is this an open, or is this a closed society? Is it a society where men can preach ideas - novel, unorthodox, heresies, to established churches and established governments - where there is a constant contest for men's hearts and minds on the basis of what is right, of what is just, of what is in the national interests, or is it a closed society where the mass media - the newspapers, the journals, publications, TV, radio - either bound by sound or by sight, or both sound and sight, men's minds are fed with a constant drone of sycophantic support for a particular orthodox political philosophy? I am talking of the principle of the open society, the open debate, ideas, not intimidation, persuasion not coercion…”

Help us translate this quote

Lee Kuan Yew

Lee Kuan Yew, Before Singapore's independence, Malaysian Parliamentary Debates, Dec 18, 1964
1960s

“The final verdict will not be in the obituaries. The final verdict will be when the PhD students dig out the archives, read my old papers, assess what my enemies have said, sift the evidence and seek the truth. I'm not saying that everything I did was right, but everything I did was for an honourable purpose”

Help us translate this quote

Lee Kuan Yew

Interview with the New York Times, September 2010 http://www.nas.gov.sg/archivesonline/data/pdfdoc/20100920006/transcript_of_minister_mentor_lee_kuan_yew.pdf
2010s

“(Without the CPF), Singaporeans would buy enormous quantities of clothes, shoes, furniture, television sets, radio, tape recorders, hi-fis, washing machines, motor cars. They would have no substantial or permanent asset to show for it.”

Help us translate this quote

Lee Kuan Yew

Asian Wall Street Journal, Oct 21 1985
1980s

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

Help us translate this quote

Lee Kuan Yew

MM Lee Kuan Yew, after 2006 Elections http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/singapore-tries-to-imagine-a-future-without-lee-kuan-yew/2015/03/18/b12acc7c-cbe7-11e4-8730-4f473416e759_story.html
2000s

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

Help us translate this quote

Lee Kuan Yew

Lee Kuan Yew, in a wry aside to critics who have accused him of governing Singapore like a nanny state, From Third World to First, The Singapore Story: 1965-2000, Lee Kuan Yew. 2000)
2000s

“But if you are a troublemaker… it's our job to politically destroy you. Put it this way. As long as JB Jeyaretnam [Workers' Party leader] stands for what he stands for -- a thoroughly destructive force for me -- we will knock him. There are two ways of playing this. One, a you attack the policies; two, you attack the system. Jeyaretnam was attacking the system, he brought the Chief Justice into it. If I want to fix you, do I need the Chief Justice to fix you? 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. That's the way I had to survive in the past. That's the way the communists tackled me. He brought the Chief Justice into the political arena.”

Help us translate this quote

Lee Kuan Yew

SM Lee Kuan Yew, The Man & His Ideas, 1997
1990s

“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.”

Help us translate this quote

Lee Kuan Yew

SM Lee Kuan Yew, The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew, 1998
1990s

“When you're Singapore and your existence depends on performance — extraordinary performance, better than your competitors — when that performance disappears because the system on which it's been based becomes eroded, then you've lost everything… I try to tell the younger generation that and they say the old man is playing the same record, we've heard it all before. I happen to know how we got here and I know how we can unscramble it.”

Help us translate this quote

Lee Kuan Yew

On one election result in Singapore, in Straits Times (26 June 2008), and "Opposition would ruin Singapore: Lee Kuan Yew" in AFP report at Google News (26 June 2008) http://web.archive.org/web/20080630100140/http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hO5GOaqrgGNspmaeLjs7LFRH6Fsw
2000s

“I’m dead by then. There’ll be different voices, different standpoints, but I stand by my record. I did some sharp and hard things to get things right. Maybe some people disapproved of it. Too harsh, but a lot was at stake and I wanted the place to succeed, that’s all. At the end of the day, what have I got? A successful Singapore. What have I given up? My life.”

Help us translate this quote

Lee Kuan Yew

On how history will assess him, in Hard Truths to Keep Singapore Going, 2011
2010s

“We have to lock up people, without trial, whether they are communists, whether they are language chauvinists, whether they are religious extremists. If you don't do that, the country would be in ruins”

Help us translate this quote

Lee Kuan Yew

1986 http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/23/us-singapore-leekuanyew-idUSKBN0MI08Y20150323
1980s

“What if Mr Mah is unable to defend himself, he deserves to lose? No country in the world has given its citizens an asset as valuable as what we've given every family here. And if you say that policy is at fault, you must be daft.”

Help us translate this quote

Lee Kuan Yew

when asked about a Straits Times report that cited keen opposition interest in contesting Tampines GRC, which National Development Minister Mah Bow Tan helms, so that they can raise the affordability of public housing as an election issue. Prime Minister's Office, January 28 2010 http://www.pmo.gov.sg/content/pmosite/mediacentre/inthenews/ministermentor/2010/January/fewer_foreign_workersinfiveyearssaysmm.html
2010s