Lee Kuan Yew
Lee Kuan Yew
Lee Kuan Yew, GCMG, CH, SPMJ, informally known by his initials LKY, was the first Prime Minister of Singapore, governing for three decades. Lee is recognised as the nation's founding father, with the country described as transitioning from the "third world to first world in a single generation" under his leadership...
ProfessionStatesman
Date of Birth16 September 1923
giving way decided
I have decided that we shall make and build and never give way.
atheist believe laughing
I wouldn't call myself an atheist. I neither deny nor accept that there is a God. So I do not laugh at people who believe in God. But I do not necessarily believe in God - nor deny that there could be one.
daughter son worry
You marry a non-graduate, then you are going to worry if your son or daughter is going to make it to the university.
years students disorder
If I have to shoot 200,000 students to save China from another 100 years of disorder, so be it.
drinking self creative
Life is not just eating, drinking, television and cinema...The human mind must be creative, must be self-generating ; it cannot depend on just gadgets to amuse itself.
christian white people
Now if democracy will not work for the Russians, a white Christian people, can we assume that it will naturally work with Asians?
children regret two
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.
sick bed get-up
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.
years way repent
If Aljunied decides to go that way, well Aljunied has five years to live and repent.
years people fool
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. The gullible fools!
fashion judging car
I’m not interested in changing either my suit or my car or whatever with every change in fashion. That’s irrelevant. I don’t judge myself or my friends by their fashions. Of course, I don’t approve of people who are sloppy and unnecessarily shabby or dishevelled… But I’m not impressed by a US$5,000 or US$10,000 Armani suit.
jobs writing school
You take a poll of any people. What is it they want? The right to write an editorial as you like? They want homes, medicine, jobs, schools.
religious real gun
If, for instance, you put in a Malay officer who's very religious and who has family ties in Malaysia in charge of a machine gun unit, that's a very tricky business. We've got to know his background... I'm saying these things because they are real, and if I don't think that, and I think even if today the Prime Minister doesn't think carefully about this, I and my family could have a tragedy.
wish laurels
Rest on laurels? I wish I could do that. No, you rest when you're dead