Usually I read biographies of interesting people. I am not attracted to novels - make-believe, or recreations of what people think life should be.

One-man-one-vote is a most difficult form of government.. Results can be erratic.

I’m not intellectually convinced that one-man, one-vote is the best. We practise it because that’s what the British bequeathed us

The task of the leaders must be to provide or create for them a strong framework within which they can learn, work hard, be productive and be rewarded accordingly. And this is not easy to achieve.

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

There is nothing to prevent you from pushing your propaganda, to push your programme out to the students or with the public at large…and if you can carry the ground, if you are right, you win. That’s democracy.

You know, the cure for all this talk is really a good dose of incompetent government. You get that alternative and you'll never put Singapore together again: Humpty Dumpty cannot be put together again... my asset values will disappear, my apartments will be worth a fraction of what they were, my ministers' jobs will be in peril, their security will be at risk and their women will become maids in other people's countries, foreign workers.