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.
If Singapore is a nanny state, then I am proud to have fostered one.
I support the view that free trade in goods and services is a win-win situation. I'm not so convinced that free flows of capital without restriction is a win-win situation.
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.
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.
Of-course we did, but we didn't reply because we knew once this leaks the others will scatter, so in the few days we moved quickly before the press got hold of it. The press did get hold of it a few days later, we nabbed, we were able to get 15, the others got away.
I had some very powerful minds working with me.
The problem is to keep the monkey mind from running off into all kinds of thoughts.
I knew that my niece was working nearby with some bank, so my wife rang up the mother and the mother called back to say that shes just called up to say she was alright.
The original communitarianism of Chinese Confucian society has degenerated into nepotism, a system of family linkages, and corruption, on the mainland. And remnants of the evils of the original system are still found in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and even Singapore.
Freedom of the news media must be subordinated to the overriding needs of Singapore, and to the primacy of purpose of an elected government.
If you deprive yourself of outsourcing and your competitors do not, you're putting yourself out of business.
President Nixon was a pragmatic strategist. He would engage, not contain, China, but he would also quietly set pieces into place for a fallback position should China not play according to the rules as a good global citizen.
I am not interested in ratings by Freedom House or whatever.
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.
It's irrelevant to me what young Singaporeans think of me. I've lived long enough to know that you may be idealised in life and reviled after you're dead.
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.
At the end of the day, is Singapore society better or worse off? That's the test.
