Good Quotes —— Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master’s Insights on China, the United States and the World (3)

I learned to ignore criticism and advice from experts and quasi-experts, especially academics in the social and political sciences. They have pet theories on how a society should develop to approximate their ideal, especially how poverty should be reduced and welfare extended. I always try to be correct, not politically correct.———Chapter 8: The Future of Democracy

I do not take anything all that seriously. If I did, I would be quite a sick man. A number of foolish things will be said about you. If you take them all seriously, you will get quite demented.———Chapter 8: The Future of Democracy

Government, to be effective, must at least give the impression of enduring, and a government which is open to the vagaries of the ballot box… is a government which is already weakened before it starts to govern.———Chapter 8: The Future of Democracy

My idea of popular government is that you do not have to be popular all the time when you are governing… There are moments when you have to be thoroughly unpopular… If you want to be popular all the time, you will misgovern.———Chapter 8: The Future of Democracy

I have never been over-concerned or obsessed with opinion polls or popularity polls. I think a leader who is, is a weak leader. If you are concerned with whether your rating will go up or down, then you are not a leader. You are just catching the wind… you will go where the wind is blowing… What the crowd thinks of me from time to time, I consider totally irrelevant… The whole ground can be against, but if I know this is right, I set out to do it, and I am quite sure, given time, as events unfold, I will win over the ground.”———Chapter 8: The Future of Democracy

[N]owhere in the world today are [rights and freedoms] allowed to be practiced without limitations, for blindly applied, these ideals can work toward the undoing of organized society.———Chapter 8: The Future of Democracy

For the acid test of any legal system is not the greatness or the grandeur of its ideal concepts, but whether, in fact, it is able to produce order and justice in the relationships between person and person, and between person and the state. To maintain this order with the best degree of tolerance and humanity is a problem.———Chapter 8: The Future of Democracy

Good Quotes —— Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master’s Insights on China, the United States and the World (2)

I do not believe that Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, or Singapore could have succeeded… if they had to work under [American-style] constitution, where gridlock on every major issue is a way of life.———Chapter 2: The Future of the United States

To get good government, you must have good people in charge of government. I have observed in the last 40 years that even with a poor system of government, but with good strong people in charge, people get passable government with decent progress. On the other hand, I have seen many ideal systems of government fail… Nothing wrong with the constitution, with the institutions and the checks and the balances. But the societies did not have the leaders who could work those institutions, nor the people who respected those institutions… The leaders who inherited these constitutions were not equal to the job, and their countries failed, and their system collapsed in riots, in coups, and in revolution.———Chapter 2: The Future of the United States

It is the people who run the system who make it come to life.———Chapter 2: The Future of the United States

Political systems that yield inferior economic performance will ultimately be discarded for those that are more productive.———Chapter 2: The Future of India

Standing still is a sure way to extinction.———Chapter 6: The Future of National Economic Growth

While the scholar is still the greatest factor in economic progress, he will be so only if he uses his brains – not in studying the great books, classical texts, and poetry, but in capturing and discovering new knowledge… and the myriad of new subjects that need to be mastered.———Chapter 6: The Future of National Economic Growth

A short mountain range is unlike to have peaks that can equal Mount Everest.———Chapter 6: The Future of National Economic Growth

Unlike workers in the repetitive, machine-based age, tomorrow’s workers must depend more on their own knowledge and skills. They have to manage their own control systems, supervise themselves, and take upon themselves the responsibility to upgrade. They must be disciplined enough to think on their own and to seek to excel without someone breathing down their neck. Workers in the new economy cannot be content with just problem solving and perfecting the known. They must be enterprising and innovative, always seeking new ways of doing the job, to create the extra value, the extra edge.———Chapter 6: The Future of National Economic Growth