Quotes from Lee Kuan Yew

We accept human nature as it is, then we base our system on it. Your system must accept that human nature is like that. You get the best out of people for society by incentives and disincentives. If you remove too much of their rewards from the top tier, they will migrate.

But for a very small number of people, what we stood for could easily have done a great deal of good for Malaysia and established it for many centuries to come as a stable and viable multiracial nation. ... Kinship and feelings for one another cannot be legislated out by a political decision.

It was the first time I had left Singapore to go overseas. I was being exposed to a new world of the hates and loves, the prejudices and biases of different peoples

We faced tremendous odds with an improbable chance of survival. Singapore was not a natural country but man-made, a trading post the British had developed into a nodal point in their worldwide maritime empire. We inherited the island without its hinterland, a heart without a body.

China wants to be China and accepted as such—not as an honorary member of the West.

The trip down the Yangtze from Chongqing (formerly Chungking, Chiang Kai-shek's World War II capital in Sichuan) to Yichang at the exit of the gorges took one and a half days. To look up and see, high up on the perpendicular surface of sheer rock, huge Chinese characters carved thousands of years ago to commemorate events and ideas was to be awed.

Political systems that yield inferior economic performance will ultimately be discarded for those that are more productive

First, we had to get rid of the British.... To do that, you had to mobilize support from the widest possible group and get as big a majority of the population as you could.... First, you've got to get power. Then, having got power, you say, What's the problem? Have I said these things? If so, let's forget it.

I was suffering from culture shock before the phrase was coined

They had no confidence in themselves and even less in their own kind.

If there was one formula for our success,it was that we were constantly studying how to make things work,or how to make them work better.

What I fear is complacency. When things always become better, people tend to want more for less work.

A military presence does not need to be used to be useful.

Now if democracy will not work for the Russians, a white Christian people, can we assume that it will naturally work with Asians?

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.

The values that East Asian culture upholds, such as the primacy of group interests over individual interests, support the total group effort necessary to develop rapidly.

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

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.

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.

Having an education is one thing, being educated is another.