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The greatest quotes from Lee Kuan Yew

Written by
Time Out Singapore editors
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The founding father of modern Singapore has established quite a reputation for his strong opinions. We pick out five of his best quotes.

On leadership

'I have never been over concerned or obsessed with opinion polls or popularity polls. I think a leader who is, is a weak leader.'
- The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew

'The task of the leaders must be to provide or create for [the people] a strong framework within which they can learn, work hard, be productive and be rewarded accordingly. And this is not easy to achieve.'
- The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew

On humility

'I would say the greatest was Deng Xiaoping. At his age, to admit that he was wrong, that all these ideas, Marxism, Leninism, Maoism, they are just not working and have to be abandoned, you need a great man to do that...'
- In Conversations with Lee Kuan Yew: Citizen Singapore: How to Build a Nation by Tom Plate. Lee was asked to name a few of the great men he has met.

On China

‘I can’t speak as a Chinese because I’m a Singaporean. I’m of Chinese ethnic stock and that is crucial. […] Speaking as a Singaporean, with some of the built-in memory programming of the Chinese people, I would say that if you believe that the Chinese people would just splinter up into so many warlords, communist committees, each governing a province or part of a province, then you will make one of the gravest mistakes about Asia.'
- In a 1967 interview with reporters from NBC News, Chicago Sun-Times, The New York Times and Washington Evening Star. Lee was asked to speak 'as a Chinese who understands China' on whether the latter will 'become again a strong unified country that might represent some kind of a danger to South-East Asia'.

On social cohesion

‘No, you can go looser where it’s not race, language and religion because those are deeply gut issues and [they] will surface the moment you start playing on them. It’s inevitable, but on other areas, policies, right or wrong, disparity of opportunities, rich and poor, well go ahead. But don’t play race, language, religion. We’ve got here, we’ve become cohesive, keep it that way. We’ve not used Chinese as a majority language because it will split the population. We have English as our working language, it’s equal for everybody, and it’s given us the progress because we’re connected to the world. If you want to keep your Malay, or your Chinese, or your Tamil, Urdu or whatever, do that as a second language, not equal to your first language. It’s up to you, how high a standard you want to achieve.’
- In a 2010 interview with Seth Mydans of The New York Times and International Herald Tribune. Lee was asked if he thinks Singapore ‘[might] lighten up a little when you go, that the rules will become a little looser’.

The wake is at Parliament House from March 25 to 28, 10am to 8pm for the public to pay their respects.

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