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

History should remember Blair and Bush as the killers of children, or as the lying prime minister and president.

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.

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

Membership of an organisation is good, as long as you can make yourself heard.

The Commonwealth is a mixture of developing and developed world, in which the developed countries were very influential and their policies hold sway most of the time.

The Malays are spiritually inclined, tolerant and easy-going. The non-Malays, and especially the Chinese, are materialistic, aggressive and have an appetite for work. For equality to come about, it is necessary that these strikingly contrasting races adjust to each other.