Lee Kuan Yew

More from Lee Kuan Yew

• I make no apologies that the PAP is the Government and the Government is the PAP.

  Quoted in R. S. Milne and Diane K. Mauzy, Singapore: The Legacy of Lee Kuan Yew (1990), p. 85

  • Government
  • Politics

• For me it is a moment of anguish because all my life … you see, the whole of my adult life … I have believed in merger and the unity of these two territories.

  Press conference on Singapore’s separation from Malaysia (9 August 1965)

  • History

• If you can’t think because you can’t chew, try a banana.

  Responding to a BBC reporter who suggested that Singapore’s draconian laws (including the ban on chewing gum) could stifle the people’s creativity (2000).

  • Clever Jabs
  • Thinking

All 5 quotes from Lee Kuan Yew

Popular quotes

• No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent.

  John Donne1572–1631No Man Is an Island (1624), Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (1624), Meditation 17In context

• I came, I saw, I conquered.

  Julius Caesar100–44 BCInscription on the triumphal wagon reported in The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius, as translated by Robert Graves (1957).

  • Success

• The unexamined life is not worth living.

  Socrates470–399 BCThe Apology of Socrates (399 BC)

  • Philosophy