Lee Kuan Yew Short Quotes

25 Sourced Quotes

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

Lee Kuan Yew
How do I comfort myself? Well, I say, 'Life is just like that.'

Lee Kuan Yew
Every person, genius or moron, has a right to reproduce himself.

Lee Kuan Yew
If Singapore is a nanny state, then I am proud to have fostered one.

Lee Kuan Yew
Rest on laurels? I wish I could do that. No, you rest when you're dead

Lee Kuan Yew
I make no apologies that the PAP is the Government and the Government is the PAP.

Lee Kuan Yew
If Aljunied decides to go that way, well Aljunied has five years to live and repent.

Lee Kuan Yew
Please do not assume that you can change governments. Young people don't understand this.

Lee Kuan Yew
There is a conspiracy to do us in. Why?... They see us as a threat to the rest of Singapore.

Lee Kuan Yew
I do not yet know of a man who became a leader as a result of having undergone a leadership course.

Lee Kuan Yew
Close the coffin, then decide. Then you assess him. I may still do something foolish before the lid is closed on me.

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

Lee Kuan Yew
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.

Lee Kuan Yew
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.

Lee Kuan Yew
He took over, and he said: 'If I have to shoot 200,000 students to save China from another 100 years of disorder, so be it.'

Lee Kuan Yew
I have been accused of many things in my life, but not even my worst enemy has ever accused me of being afraid to speak my mind.

Lee Kuan Yew
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

Lee Kuan Yew
At the end of the day, we are so many digits in the machine. The point is – are these digits stronger than the competitors' digits?

Lee Kuan Yew
I'm not saying that everything I did was right, but everything I did was for an honorable purpose. I had to do some nasty things, locking fellows up without trial.

Lee Kuan Yew
That was the year the British decided to get out and sell everything. So I immediately held an election. I knew the people will be dead scared. And I won my bet big-time.

Lee Kuan Yew
You know the Singaporean. He is a hard-working, industrious, rugged individual. Or we would not have made the grade. But let us also recognise that he is a champion grumbler.

Lee Kuan Yew
Freedom of the press, freedom of the news media, must be subordinated to the overriding needs of the integrity of Singapore, and to the primacy of purpose of an elected government.

Lee Kuan Yew
The task of the leaders must be to provide or create for them a strong framework within which they can learn, work hard, be productive and be rewarded accordingly. And this is not easy to achieve.

Lee Kuan Yew
So, when is the last leaf falling? I can feel the gradual decline of energy and vitality. And I mean generally, every year, when you know you are not on the same level as last year. But that's life.

Lee Kuan Yew
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

Lee Kuan Yew