“If all the 300 (top civil servants and political elite) were to crash in one jumbo jet, then Singapore will disintegrate.”

“Laila: A jeep? Maybe a jumbo jet?”

“Civil servants should keep out of politics and politics should be kept out of the civil service”

“Not all civil servants admire strong political leadership. But if you want to change things for the better you need strong political leadership.”

“The collapse of the Soviet Union, a state which appeared as solidly entrenched to us as the tsarist Empire did in its day, was not triggered by social unrest: there were no strike waves, no massive demonstrations, no widespread violence. The USSR disintegrated because of political decisions made at the top.”

“Civilized society is perpetually menaced with disintegration through this primary hostility of men towards one another.”

“If society is confined by the chains of groupthink and top-to-bottom command structures, frustration and anger have few outlets—leading mostly to hopeless confrontation with the status quo. When confronted by a wall of complex, emotional, and politically charged rifts, a powder keg of resentment can burst into a vicious civil war of backstabbing, mistrust, and disloyalty, especially when taking political control is the only means by which to terminate domination by a particular ruling elite.”

“Most Americans – regardless of whether they were once on the left or right – have become politically disempowered and economically insecure. Nowadays it’s the boardwalk versus private jets on their way to the Hamptons.”

“He knew from his own experience in Singapore that the further up the ladder one got, the more the job was about politics and statistics than actually dealing with crime.”

“What is actually happening now is that monoploy capitalism needs the state to disempower ordinary people's institutions and lives. What we are actually developing in modern Europe is a post-democratic society. We are creating an oligarchical elite structure where moneyed elites, the elites of industry cohabit with political elites and they move into each other's regimes and spaces. So we have now produced what I would call a market state, and the market state really just exists for the benefit of those in the top. And there is clear economic and social evidence for this, it is very clear that only those at the very top of society in the developed world have really benefited from the last thirty years.”