Quotes from Lee Hsien Loong

My infrastructure must run brilliantly. My whole system must be different from what you can get anywhere else in Asia.

China's influence is growing; it is natural that they want to integrate more, do more business with countries around them, and the Belt and Road is a constructive way in which they can do so.

When people say they don't want a nanny state, they are, in fact, in a conflicted state of mind. On the one hand, they want to do whatever they want and not be stopped. On the other hand, if something goes wrong, they want to be rescued.

Singapore admires America's dynamism, vibrancy, and capacity for self-renewal. These qualities attract the best and brightest from around the world.

It has to be good to live in Singapore because otherwise, nobody will stand for it.

We know India is very focussed on black money; it is a very high-focus subject and we have been very careful to make sure the investments into India are legitimate. There is no 'round-tripping' or hot money or bad money being funnelled through Singapore.

You have to understand that Singapore is quite different from Mauritius.

If you don't have that Singapore core, you can top up the numbers, but you are no longer Singapore. It doesn't feel Singapore - it isn't Singapore - and we can issue everybody red passports, but where is the continuity?

Countries in Asia - Singapore, certainly, but many other countries too - are good friends to both China and America, and we would like to be good friends with both.

Everybody has his place; everybody is equal. Treated equally, equal standing, equal rights and status.

Just as our forefathers saved and invested to build what we, the current generation, are enjoying today, so, too, we must plant trees so that our sons and daughters, and their sons and daughters, can enjoy the shade.

My colleagues went on the Internet, went on Facebook, and they found it helpful, and they persuaded me that I should try, so I did. It's quite fun provided you keep it in balance and... from time to time slip in a serious message.

It's never easy to be a small country next to a big neighbor.

I would not say that the North Koreans will do anything that the Chinese want them to do.

What we can do in Singapore may not be doable elsewhere. Some things you know you need: you want efficient government, you want clean government, you want to do away with corruption, you must educate your people. You want to get housing and so on. All these are not such secrets, not so special to Singapore.

Every time you make a rule, somebody will think of a way to operate around the rule.

The natural result of people preferring one of their own race is that a minority race president will find it hard to get elected, and so it's something we should do something about and which we can do something about.

We want the U.S. to have constructive and stable relations with China. That makes it much easier for us. Then we don't have to choose sides.

You need to have good people: honourable, capable, committed in politics, standing in public office. It's not a guarantee, but it's the ideal we have to aim for.

We are looking for ways where you can have a sandbox, where you have a restricted environment within which people can try new things, and I can try new rules. And depending on what works, then I open up the sandbox, and it becomes the new rule for the whole system.

I hope that soon after the next election, amongst them they will have decided, settled, and the leader will be ready to take over from me.

We have long depended on an America which has got a clear sense of its stakes in the world and how much it depends on the world as well as how much the world and its allies and friends depend on the United States of America, and we hope this will continue.

China is a very big and complicated country; it's not easy to govern. But with courage and unity, China will certainly overcome all difficulties and continue to develop and move forward.

You look at the Americans. They don't lack fervour in moral causes. They promote democracy, freedom of speech, women's rights, gay rights, sometimes even transgender rights. But you don't see them applying that universally across the world with all their allies.