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All Quotes by author - Lee Kuan Yew

" After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States and China are more likely to view each other as competitors if not adversaries. But the die has not been cast. The best possible outcome is a new understanding that when they cannot cooperate, they will coexist and allow all countries in the Pacific to grow and thrive. "

" All my life... I believed in Malaysian merger and unity of the two territories. You know that we, as a people, are connected by geography, economics, by ties of kinship. "

" America's greatest long-term influence on China comes from playing host to the thousands of students who come from China each year, some of the ablest Chinese scholars and scientists. They will be the most powerful agents for change in China. "

" As an East Asian looking at America, I find attractive and unattractive features. I like, for example, the free, easy and open relations between people regardless of social status, ethnicity or religion. "

" China is a vast, disparate country; there is no alternative to strong central power. "

" Countries that are agricultural can, at a low standard of living, sustain themselves. You can be self-sufficient; the money economy is a relatively insignificant part of the total economy. Singapore never was an agricultural country. "

" If you are going to lower me into the grave, and I feel something is wrong, I will get up. "

" If you deprive yourself of outsourcing and your competitors do not, you're putting yourself out of business. "

" I had some very powerful minds working with me. "

" I have always thought that humanity was animal-like. The Confucian theory was man could be improved, but I'm not sure he can be. He can be trained; he can be disciplined. "

" I knew that my niece was working nearby with some bank, so my wife rang up the mother and the mother called back to say that shes just called up to say she was alright. "

" I know if I rest, I'll slide downhill fast. "

" I'm reaching 87, trying to keep fit, presenting a vigorous figure, and it's an effort, and is it worth the effort? I laugh at myself trying to keep a bold front. It's become my habit. I just carry on. "

" In the East, the main object is to have a well-ordered society so that everybody can have maximum enjoyment of his freedoms. This freedom can only exist in an ordered state and not in a natural state of contention and anarchy. "

" I support the view that free trade in goods and services is a win-win situation. I'm not so convinced that free flows of capital without restriction is a win-win situation. "

" It's irrelevant to me what young Singaporeans think of me. I've lived long enough to know that you may be idealised in life and reviled after you're dead. "

" I've got one grandson gone to MIT. Another grandson had been in the American school here. Because he was dyslexic, and we then didn't have the teachers to teach him how to overcome or cope with his dyslexia, so he was given exemption to go to the American school. He speaks like an American. He's going to Wharton. "

" My children were educated in what were then Chinese schools, and they learned English as a subject. But they made up when they went to English-language universities. So they didn't lose out. They had a basic set of traditional Confucian values. Not my grandchildren. "

" The acid test of any legal system is not the greatness or the grandeur of its ideal concepts, but whether, in fact, it is able to produce order and justice. "

" The difficult part was getting the people to change their habits so that they behaved more like first world citizens, not like third world citizens spitting and littering all over the place. "

" The exuberance of democracy leads to undisciplined and disorderly conditions which are inimical to development. "

" The original communitarianism of Chinese Confucian society has degenerated into nepotism, a system of family linkages, and corruption, on the mainland. And remnants of the evils of the original system are still found in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and even Singapore. "

" The problem is to keep the monkey mind from running off into all kinds of thoughts. "

" The ultimate test of the value of a political system is whether it helps that society to establish conditions which improve the standard of living for the majority of its people. "

" Well if done a lot of hard work to try and get people to act rationally, the fact that weve had 15 deviant Muslims, plus 5 or 8 others that got away does not mean that all Muslims are deviant or extremists. "

" You need a certain standard of literacy, moral and ethical values, to be able to run a one man, one vote system. "

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