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The Americans should know the character of the men they are dealing with in Singapore and not get themselves further dragged into calumny ... They are not dealing with Ngo Dinh Diem or Syngman Rhee. You do not buy and sell this Government.

— Lee Kuan Yew

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Government

More quotes by Lee Kuan Yew

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.

All Lee Kuan Yew quotes →

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Ill can he rule the great, that cannot reach the small.

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene (1589)

The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.

James Madison

Bureaucracy and social harmony are inversely proportional to each other.

Leon Trotsky The Revolution Betrayed (1936)

There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.

John Adams

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Lee Kuan Yew (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.