Lee Kuan Yew Quotes

“Young people learn best from personal experience. The lessons their elders have learned at great pain and expense can add to the knowledge of the young and help them to cope with problems and dangers they had not faced before; but such learning, second hand, is never as vivid, as deep, or as durable as that which was personally experienced.”
― Graham Allison, Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master's Insights on China, the United States, and the World

“clean, efficient, rational, and predictable government is a competitive advantage.26”
― Graham Allison, Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master's Insights on China, the United States, and the World

“in order to benefit from globalization, countries must ensure that their laws and institutions facilitate the global flow.”
― Graham Allison, Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master's Insights on China, the United States, and the World

“It is the will, the cohesion, the stamina, the discipline of its people, and the quality of their leaders which ensure it an honorable place in history.14”
― Graham Allison, Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master's Insights on China, the United States, and the World

“There are three basic essentials for [the] successful transformation of any society. First, a determined leadership…two, an administration which is efficient; and three, social discipline.”
― Graham Allison, Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master's Insights on China, the United States, and the World

“If you want to thrive in the modern world, then you must not be afraid.”
― Graham Allison, Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master's Insights on China, the United States, and the World

“What worries you about U.S. culture? I find parts of it totally unacceptable: guns, drugs, violent crime, vagrancy, unbecoming behavior in public, in sum, the breakdown of civil society. The expansion of the right of the individual to behave or misbehave as he or she pleases has come at the expense of orderly society…It has a lot to do with the erosion of the moral underpinnings of a society and the diminution of personal responsibility.”
― Graham Allison, Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master's Insights on China, the United States, and the World

“understood Deng Xiaoping when he said: if 200,000 students have to be shot, shoot them, because the alternative is China in chaos for another 100 years…Deng understood, and he released it stage by stage. Without Deng, China would have imploded.36”
― Graham Allison, Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master's Insights on China, the United States, and the World

“One of the reasons why a privileged society based on the privilege of property and rank must give way to a society where people are rewarded according to their ability and their contribution to society is that it is only when people are encouraged to give their best that society progresses. No society has existed in history where all people were equal and obtained equal rewards. If that were to be practiced, and the lazy and the incompetent were paid as much as the industrious and the intelligent, it would end up by all the good people giving as little of themselves so as not to give more than their weaker brethren. But it is possible to create a society in which everybody is given not equal rewards, but equal opportunities, and where rewards vary not in accordance with the ownership of property, but with the worth of a person’s contribution to that society. In other words, society should make it worth people’s while to give their best to the country. This is the way to progress.”
― Graham Allison, Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master's Insights on China, the United States, and the World

“My life is not guided by philosophy or theories. I get things done and leave others to extract the principles from my successful solutions. I do not work on a theory.”
― Graham Allison, Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master's Insights on China, the United States, and the World

“Revolutionary situations throw up great leaders who demand blood, sweat, and tears; comfortable circumstances produce leaders who promise people an even easier life.”
― Graham Allison, Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master's Insights on China, the United States, and the World

“One of the reasons why a privileged society based on the privilege of property and rank must give way to a society where people are rewarded according to their ability and their contribution to society is that it is only when people are encouraged to give their best that society progresses.”
― Graham Allison, Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master's Insights on China, the United States, and the World

“For at 60, more than at 50, comes the realization of the transient nature of all earthly glories and successes, and the ephemeral quality of sensory joys and pleasures, when compared to intellectual, moral, or spiritual satisfactions…I have wondered how much of what I am is nature and how much was nurture?”
― Graham Allison, Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master's Insights on China, the United States, and the World

“One person, one vote is a most difficult form of government. From time to time, the results can be erratic. People are sometimes fickle. They get bored with stable, steady improvements in life, and in a reckless moment, they vote for a change for change’s sake.”
― Graham Allison, Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master's Insights on China, the United States, and the World

“A nation is great not by its size alone. It is the will, the cohesion, the stamina, the discipline of its people, and the quality of their leaders which ensure it an honorable place in history.”
― Graham Allison, Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master's Insights on China, the United States, and the World

“The ultimate test of the value of a political system is whether it helps that society to establish conditions which improve the standard of living for the majority of its people, plus enabling the maximum of personal freedoms compatible with the freedoms of others in society.”
― Graham Allison, Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master's Insights on China, the United States, and the World

“But I am convinced, personally, that we would have a better system if we gave every person over the age of 40 who has a family two votes, because he or she is likely to be more careful, voting also for his or her children. He or she is more likely to vote in a serious way than a capricious young person under 30…At”
― Graham Allison, Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master's Insights on China, the United States, and the World

“Civilizations emerge because human societies in a given condition respond to the challenge. Where the challenge is just about right…the human being flourishes.”
― Graham Allison, Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master's Insights on China, the United States, and the World

“want to run the system as efficiently as possible, but make allowances for those who will not be doing well because nature did not give them enough, or they cannot make that extra effort…I”
― Graham Allison, Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master's Insights on China, the United States, and the World

“We have arranged help, but in such a way that only those who have no other choice will seek it. This is the opposite of attitudes in the West, where liberals actively encourage people to demand entitlements with no sense of shame, causing an explosion of welfare costs.41”
― Graham Allison, Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master's Insights on China, the United States, and the World

“We have exercised power as trustees for the people, with an abiding sense of our fiduciary responsibility…When those in office regard the power vested in them as a personal prerogative, they inevitably enrich themselves, promote their families, and favor their friends. The fundamental structures of the modern state are eroded, like the supporting beams of a house after termites have attacked them. Then the people have to pay dearly and long for the sins and crimes of their leaders.”
― Graham Allison, Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master's Insights on China, the United States, and the World

“The business of a government is to…make firm decisions so that there can be certainty and stability in the affairs of the people.”
― Graham Allison, Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master's Insights on China, the United States, and the World

“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.”
― Graham Allison, Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master's Insights on China, the United States, and the World

“The easy things—just getting a blank mind to take in knowledge and become trainable—we have done. Now comes the difficult part. To get literate and numerate minds to be more innovative, to be more productive, is not easy. It requires a mindset change, a different set of values.”
― Graham Allison, Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master's Insights on China, the United States, and the World

“National interest is often subservient to special interests. Many needed reforms have been stalled due to opposition from special interest groups. Special interests thrive in an atmosphere of populism. In the last 20 years, there has been a proliferation of schemes for cheap food, free power, and subsidized loans…They impose a heavy cost on the whole economy…The distinction between welfare and populism has blurred.”
― Graham Allison, Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master's Insights on China, the United States, and the World

“I did not understand what a cosseted life would do to the spirit of enterprise of a people, diminishing their desire to achieve and succeed. I believed that wealth came naturally from wheat growing in the fields, orchards bearing fruit every summer, and factories turning out all that was needed to maintain a comfortable life. Only two decades later, when I had to make an outdated entrepôt economy feed a people, did I realize we needed to create the wealth before we can share it. And to create wealth, high motivation and incentives are crucial to drive a people to achieve, to take risks for profit, or there will be nothing to share.37”
― Graham Allison, Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master's Insights on China, the United States, and the World

“From my empirical observation of people and leaders, I believe 70–80% of a person’s capability, proclivities, temperament is genetic. The day you are conceived, at least 70% has already been fixed in the womb. If you are bound to be a capable person, you will grow into a capable person. If you are bound to be slow, you will be slow. Nothing can change that…I do not believe, contrary to what American books say, that you can teach people to be leaders. I think you are a born leader or you are not a leader. You can teach a person to be a manager, but not a leader. They must have the extra drive, intellectual verve, an extra tenacity, and the will to overcome.”
― Graham Allison, Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master's Insights on China, the United States, and the World

“Only those count and matter who have the strength and courage of their convictions to stick up and stand up for what they believe in, for their people, for their country, regardless of what happens to them.”
― Graham Allison, Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master's Insights on China, the United States, and the World

“Our immediate task is to build up a society in which people will be rewarded not according to the amount of property they own, but according to their active contribution to society in physical or mental labor. From each according to his or her ability. To each according to his or her worth and contribution to society.”
― Graham Allison, Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master's Insights on China, the United States, and the World

“The global financial crisis was caused by excesses of the liberal system of regulations and the belief that a completely free market will allow enormous innovation and allocate capital to the most profitable enterprises with the highest returns. Once the Federal Reserve Chairman decided it was not necessary to regulate derivatives and supervise them, the fuse was lit. Once you find that you can mash up a lot of good and bad assets in one bundle and pass on your risk all around Europe and other parts of the world, you have started something like a Ponzi scheme which must come to an end sometime…The business of a person in a financial institution is to make the biggest profit for himself, so just condemning the bankers and the profit takers does not make sense. You have allowed these rules, and they work within these rules.”
― Graham Allison, Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master's Insights on China, the United States, and the World