Lee Kuan Yew
FameRank: 6

"Lee Kuan Yew", Knight Grand Cross of the Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George/GCMG, Companion of Honour/CH, is a Singaporean politician. He was the first Prime Minister of Singapore, governing for three decades. He is also widely recognised as the founding father of modern Singapore.

As the co-founder and first Secretary-General of the People's Action Party (PAP), he led the party to eight victories from 1959 to 1990, and oversaw the separation of Singapore from Malaysia in 1965 and its subsequent transformation from a relatively underdeveloped colonial outpost with no natural resources into a "First World" Four Asian Tigers/Asian Tiger. He is one of the most influential political figures in Asia.

Singapore's second prime minister, Goh Chok Tong, appointed him Senior Minister in 1990. He held the advisory post of Minister Mentor, created by his son Lee Hsien Loong, when the latter became the nation's third prime minister in August 2004.Cite news

/title = Singapore told to feel free

/url = http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/aug/13/1

If you enjoy these quotes, be sure to check out other famous statesmen! More Lee Kuan Yew on Wikipedia.

I want a world-class opposition, not a riff-raff.

I learnt how people survived and how people had to submit because you need to eat and your family need to live, so I learned the meaning of power. In a sense that power comes out in the barrel of a gun and when the Japanese gun was not as big as the American gun they surrendered and the British came back.

It's a law which is approved of by Singapore's inhabitants and which allows us to reduce the drug problem.

Well, I think if I had married a different woman I would of had a very different life. She was my partner both emotionally and intellectually. At work and at play and she brought up the 3 children that we have, brought them up to be well behaved, modest and not over-bearing children.

If you deprive yourself of outsourcing and your competitors do not, you're putting yourself out of business.

Yes, we knew that sooner or later, with the build up in the Philippines, in Indonesia and after the KKM arrests in Malaysia that they were bound to penetrate us.

I don't think I made a conscious decision as a career choice. From my school days I had decided, persuaded by my parents, to prepare myself for the law. Then the Japanese occupation came and we went through three and a half years of what I would call the university of life, it was hard, it was harsh.

Few doubt the U.S. will act to remove [Saddam] unless he hands over weapons of mass destruction.

I'm not as active as before; but enough to fight an election.