Lee Kuan Yew

“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.”

“Countries that are agricultural can, at a low standard of living, sustain themselves. You can be self-sufficient; the money economy is a relatively insignificant part of the total economy. Singapore never was an agricultural country.”

“The exuberance of democracy leads to undisciplined and disorderly conditions which are inimical to development.”

“The big nest was in Afghanistan, thats not quite cleared, then there are nests in the Philippines, there are nests in Indonesia, the Malaysians are clearing up their nests.”

“Well if done a lot of hard work to try and get people to act rationally, the fact that weve had 15 deviant Muslims, plus 5 or 8 others that got away does not mean that all Muslims are deviant or extremists.”

“Latecomers to industrial development have had to catch up by finding ways of closing the gap.”

“Those who believe that after I have left the government as prime minister, I will go into a permanent retirement, really should have their heads examined.”

“I would not score very highly on religious value.”

“My children were educated in what were then Chinese schools, and they learned English as a subject. But they made up when they went to English-language universities. So they didn't lose out. They had a basic set of traditional Confucian values. Not my grandchildren.”

“The ultimate test of the value of a political system is whether it helps that society to establish conditions which improve the standard of living for the majority of its people.”

“If you are going to lower me into the grave, and I feel something is wrong, I will get up.”

“The enduring lesson is war is a disaster. Whoever wins, tremendous loss of life, property - a set back for civilisation.”

“I can feel the gradual decline of energy and vitality. And I mean generally, every year, when you know you are not on the same level as last year. But that's life.”

“I always tried to be correct, not politically correct.”

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

“The First World became a popular phrase in about the 1970s and '80s. The World Bank then began categorizing countries in different categories, advanced to the least developed.”

“All my life... I believed in Malaysian merger and unity of the two territories. You know that we, as a people, are connected by geography, economics, by ties of kinship.”

“China itself is now in the process of sloughing off not only the communist system, but also those outdated parts of Confucianism that prevent the rapid acquisition of knowledge needed to adjust to new ways of life and work.”

“Prudence dictates that there should be a balance of power in the Asia-Pacific region.”

“Freedom of the news media must be subordinated to the overriding needs of Singapore, and to the primacy of purpose of an elected government.”