If you know each other well, you want to do business with people you know well. You don't do business with strangers.

If you can't be famous, at least you can be notorious.

I'm brash and abrasive but that's because I've noticed when people are nice and polite they never get anywhere.

Malaysians, during the colonial period, were not given the top positions: we were always subordinate. Fortunately for us, the people who took over were mainly civil servants: people who were serving the Government.

I know the situation of the Commonwealth generally, and I know that the aim should be to make the Commonwealth much more relevant to the poorer countries.

The UN is hardly democratic.

Knowledge has always been important, of course. The ancient Egyptians did not raise the stones for the pyramids relying on the incantations of their gods. The waters in the irrigation canals of the great Indus Civilisation did not flow according to the laws of ignorance. Knowledge has always been power and wealth.