45 quotes
India is a creation of the British Raj and the railway system it built, and therefore it has its limitations.
Lew Kuan Yew answers people in India during the South Asian Diaspora Convention (2011)
If Aljunied decides to go that way, well Aljunied has five years to live and repent.
If all the 300 (top civil servants and political elite) were to crash in one jumbo jet, then Singapore will disintegrate.
On how Singapore does not need multiparty politics (1975)
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.'
If Singapore is a nanny state, then I am proud to have fostered one.
Please do not assume that you can change governments. Young people don’t understand this.
I don't know why Amnesty International always picks on people who are not very popular with Communists.
Statement (1974)
The ending of colonialism does not in itself result in social and economic progress: it provides the opportunities for it.
Speech to the non-aligned summit in Lusaka (1970)
India is a nation of unfulfilled greatness. Its potential has lain fallow, under used.
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.
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?
I had no faith in a system that allowed the superstition, ignorance, biases, and prejudices of seven jurymen to determine guilt or innocence.
Our unions are different: if we had British-style trade unionism we should be bankrupt, finished.
Statement (1976)
We have a reputation, which I hope is somewhat deserved, that we are a kind of little Switzerland in South-East Asia.
Speech to the Commonwealth conference (1975)
If you can't think because you can't chew, try a banana
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.
I always tried to be correct, not politically correct.
I make no apologies that the PAP is the Government and the Government is the PAP.
India is an intrinsic part of this unfolding new world order. India can no longer be dismissed as a “wounded civilisation”, in the hurtful phrase of a westernised non resident Indian author (V.S. Naipaul).
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.