It’s irrelevant to me what young Singaporeans think of me. What they think of me after I’m dead and gone in one generation will be determined by researchers who do PhDs on me, right? So there will be a lot of revisionism. As people revised Stalin, Brezhnev and one day now Yeltsin, and later on Putin. I’ve lived long enough to know that you may be idealised in life and reviled after you’re dead.

What is of consequence is I did my best.

I have decided that we shall make and build and never give way.

Whoever governs Singapore must have that iron in him. Or give it up. This is not a game of cards.

I was a product of the times, the war, the occupation, the reoccupation, my 4 years in Britain, admiring but at the same time questioning whether they are able to do a better job than we can.

Even from my sick bed, even if you are going to lower me into the grave and I feel something is going wrong, I will get up.

Without the elected president and if there is a freak result, within two or three years, the army would have to come in and stop it.