It is not the practice, now will I allow subversives to get away by insisting that I’ve got to prove everything against them in a court of law or [produce] evidence that will stand up to the strict rules of evidence of a court of law.

If you want to reach your goals and dreams, you cannot do it without discipline

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.

The human being is an unequal creature. That is a fact. And we start off with the proposition. All the great religions, all the great movements, all the great political ideology, say let us make the human being as equal as possible. In fact, he is not equal, never will be.

If Singapore is a nanny state, then I am proud to have fostered one.

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

We have to lock up people, without trial, whether they are communists, whether they are language chauvinists, whether they are religious extremists. If you don’t do that, the country would be in ruins.