24 Mar 2015
Source: Khaleej Times, 24 March 2015
Lee Kuan Yew never shrank from expressing his views bluntly. He was known as much for his tough talk as a pithy turn of phrase during campaign speeches, press interviews parliamentary debates. Some of his comments:
"Everybody knows that in my bag I have a hatchet, and a very sharp one. You take me on, I take my hatchet, we meet in the cul-de-sac. That’s the way I had to survive in the past. That’s the way the communists tackled me." (Speaking about his harsh treatment of opposition politician J B Jeyaretnam in Lee Kuan Yew: The Man and His Ideas, 1998)
"I am often accused of interfering in the private lives of citizens. Yes, if I did not, had I not done that, we wouldn’t be here today. And I say without the slightest remorse, that we wouldn’t be here, we would not have made economic progress, if we had not intervened on very personal matters who your neighbour is, how you live, the noise you make, how you spit, or what language you use. We decide what is right. Never mind what the people think." (The Straits Times, April 20, 1987)
"Whoever governs Singapore must have that iron in him. Or give it up. This is not a game of cards. This is your life and mine. I’ve spent a whole lifetime building this and as long as I’m in charge, nobody is going to knock it down." (Speech at a rally in Raffles Place, Singapore in 1980)
"You call me a dictator. You are entitled to call me whatever you like, but that doesn’t make me one . . . do I need to be a dictator when I can win, hands down?" (Quoted in an interview with the New York Times at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, 1999)
"I’m very determined. If I decide what something is worth doing, then I’ll put my heart and soul to it. The whole ground can be against me, but if I know it is right, I’ll do it. That’s the business of a leader." (Lee Kuan Yew, The man and His Ideas, 1998)