Talk:Lee Kuan Yew

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• "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." - Complaining about the Straits Times in 1959.

• "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 would not have the slightest doubt that I could govern much more effectively in their interests." - Mr Lee Kuan Yew, 1962

• "Three women were brought to the Singapore General Hospital, each in the same condition and needing a blood transfusion. The first, a Southeast Asian was given the transfusion but died a few hours later. The second, a South Asian was also given a transfusion but died a few days later. The third, an East Asian, was given a transfusion and survived. That is the X factor in development." - 27 December 1967

• “For me, it is a moment of anguish. All my life, my whole adult life, I believed in merger and unity of the two territories.”, on August 9, 1965, when Lee announced the separation of Singapore from Malaysia.

• “Do not worry about Singapore. My colleagues and I are sane, rational people even in our moments of anguish. We will weigh all possible consequences before we make any move on the political chessboard...”, 1965, when he responded to concerns of the British government after Singapore's independence. London was concerned that the young government was not able to keep things in control and might take foolish measures.

• "We must encourage those who earn less than $200 per month and cannot afford to nurture and educate many children never to have more than two... We will regret the time lost if we do not now take the first tentative steps towards correcting a trend which can leave our society with a large number of the physically, intellectually and culturally anaemic." -Lee Kuan Yew in 1967.

• "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 spent a whole life-time building this, and as long as I am in charge, nobody is going to knock it down." - 1980

• "Let us not deceive ourselves: our talent profile is nowhere near that of, say, the Jews or the Japanese in America. The exceptional number of Nobel Prize winners who are Jews is no accident. It is also no accident that a high percentage, sometimes 50%, of faculty members in the top American universities on both the east and west coasts are Jews. And the number of high calibre Japanese academics, professionals, and business executives is out of all proportion to the percentage of Japanese in the total American population." - 1982

• "If you don't include your women graduates in your breeding pool and leave them on the shelf, you would end up a more stupid society...So what happens? There will be less bright people to support dumb people in the next generation. That's a problem." -Lee Kuan Yew in 1983 National Day Rally

• "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." - Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, 1986

• "Look, Jeyaretnam cant win the infighting. I'll tell you why. WE are in charge. Every government ministry and department is under our control. And in the infighting, he will go down for the count every time... I will make him crawl on his bended knees, and beg for mercy." - As recounted by former President C. V. Devan Nair

• "At this rate, the one-man, one-vote system could lead to decline and disintegration of my power and that of the PAP!" - after the Opposition won 2 seats

• "Every election campaign starts off on a reasonable note, then in order to get the crowds excited, the PAP has to make more brazen, scurrilous, wild accusations." - Accusing the Opposition of "gutter politics" while admitting his party has done the same.

• "The party would withdraw services to the two opposition-held seats of Anson and Potong Pasir, and if all of Singapore votes us out, we withdraw all services everywhere and entirely." - On Potong Pasir and Anson electing non-PAP MPs

• “I'm prepared to banter with you. I'm prepared to humour you. But if this were an Orwellian society with an Orwellian leader, would we be having this conversation?”, Sunday Mail Magazine 1990 on being a "state out of 1984"

• “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. The zombie fantasies of young Singaporean boys will become reality, and at least I leave a few happy people behind!” 1988 National Day Rally, when he discussed the leadership transition to Goh Chok Tong in 1990.

• "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." - Lee Kuan Yew, Sept 1995.

• "Between being loved and being feared, I have always believed Machiavelli was right. If nobody is afraid of me, I’m meaningless." - Lee Kuan Yew, 6.10.1997

• "...because I don't use it so much, therefore it gets disused and there's language loss. Then I have to revive it. It's a terrible problem because learning it at adult life, it hasn't got the same roots in your memory.” May 2005, as Lee released a book, Keeping My Mandarin Alive, relating to his decades of effort to master Mandarin–a language which he said he had to re-learn due to disuse.

• "Please do not assume that you can change governments. Young people don't understand this" -- MM Lee Kuan Yew on the results of the 2006 election

• "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" -- MM Lee Kuan Yew on what would happen if a profligate opposition government touched Singapore's vast monetary reserves

• "Merit over nepotism. Do not use the word nepotism. I hate it!" -- MM Lee Kuan Yew, in a talk in response to the IMF/World Bank meet in Singapore 2006 (MM Lee's elder son, PM Lee Hsien Loong, is the youngest Brigadier General in Singapore's history, is tipped to be Lee Kuan Yew's successor as Prime Minister from a young age, whose wife is the CEO of the government-owned Temasek Holdings and whose career has also been dogged by a perceived reputation for being arrogant and autocratic.)

• "Low salaries will draw in the hypocrites who sweet talk their way into power in the name of public service, but once in charge will show their true colour, and ruin the country. It's the same with high salaries too, if you consider Singapore's situation. But who cares, as long as I am still in charge!" - 2007, on Minister's Pay