''.....I believe it is right to support a standard of human rights which
deplores barbaric behavior to your own people, let alone
torture.
I think the Chinese, in the beginning, resented this. But now on
human rights, they have begun to talk, and they recognize that
if they want to be respected in the world
community, they want to win a certain status with the rest
of the world, not just advanced countries, but even the developing
countries, then they cannot behave in a barbaric fashion to
their own people.
- Lee Kuan Yew on Human Rights and
Democracy excerpt of an interview in 2001.
"If I have to shoot
200,000 students to save China from another 100 years of disorder,
so be it."
- Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew evoking the ghost of Deng Xiaoping
whilst endorsing the Tiananmen Square massacre, Straits Times, Aug
17, 2004
"If we are to survive as a free democracy, then we must be
prepared, in principle, to concede to our enemies - even those who
do not subscribe to our views - as much(sic)constitutional rights
as you concede yourself."
- Lee Kuan Yew Legislative Assembly Debates Sept 21, 1955
''Supposing Catherine Lim
was writing about me and not the prime minister...She would not
dare, right? Because my posture, my response has been such that
nobody doubts that if you take me on, I will put on knuckle-dusters
and catch you in a cul de sac... Anybody who decides to take me on
needs to put on knuckle dusters. If you think you can hurt me more
than I can hurt you, try. There is no other way you can govern a
Chinese society.''
- SM Lee Kuan Yew, The Man and His Ideas, 1997
"But we either believe in democracy or we not. If we do, then,
we must say categorically, without qualification, that no restraint
from the any democratic processes, other than by the ordinary law
of the land, should be allowed... If you believe in democracy, you
must believe in it unconditionally. If you believe that men should
be free, then, they should have the right of free association, of
free speech, of free publication. Then, no law should permit those
democratic processes to be set at nought, and no excuse, whether of
security, should allow a government to be deterred from doing what
it knows to right, and what it must know to be right... "
- Lee Kuan Yew, Legislative Assembly Debates April 27, 1955
"Put it this way. As long
as Jeyaretnam [Workers' Party leader] stands for what he stands for
-- a thoroughly destructive force -- we will knock him. There are
two ways of playing this. One, you attack the policies; two, you
attack the system. Jeyaretnam was attacking the system, he brought
the Chief Justice into it. If I want to fix you, do I need the
Chief Justice to fix you? Everybody knows that in my bag I have a
hatchet, and a very sharp one. You take me on, I take my hatchet,
we meet in the cul-de-sac. That's the way I had to survive in the
past. That's the way the communists tackled me. He brought the
Chief Justice into the political arena."
- SM Lee Kuan Yew, The Man & His Ideas, 1997
"Let us get down to fundamentals. Is this an open, or is this a
closed society? Is it a society where men can preach ideas - novel,
unorthodox, heresies, to established churches and established
governments - where there is a constant contest for men's hearts
and minds on the basis of what is right, of what is just, of what
is in the national interests, or is it a closed society where the
mass media - the newspapaers, the journals, publications, TV, radio
- either bound by sound or by sight, or both sound and sight, men's
minds are fed with a constant drone of sycophantic support for a
particular orthodox political philosophy?
That is the first question we asked ourselves. I would like
to see minds stimulated and debate provoked, and truth refined and
crystallized out of the conflict of different evidence and
views.
I, therefore, welcome every and any opportunity of a chance to
agree, or to dissent, in order that out of thesis comes synthesis -
thesis, anti-major premise, anti-premise, synthesis, so we
progress...
I welcome every opportunity to meet members of the opposition, and
so do members of my party, over the radio, over the television,
university forums, public rallies. We never run away from the open
encounter. If your ideas, your views cannot stand the challenge of
criticism then they are too fragile and not sturdy enough to
last.
I am talking of the principle of the open society, the open debate,
ideas, not intimidation, persuasion not coercion...
Sir, the basic fundamentals we asked ourselves...is whether the
duties of the Minister of Information and Broadcasting are to
produce closed minds or open minds, because these instruments - the
mass media, the TV, the radio - can produce either the open minds
receptive to ideas and ideals, a democratic system of life, or
closed and limited.
But I know that the open debate is a painful process for
closed minds...But let me make this point: that 5 million
adult minds in Malaysia cannot be closed - definitely not in the
lifetime of the people in authority. It is not possible because
whatever the faults of the colonial system, and there are
many...they generated the open mind, the inquiring
mind."
- Lee Kuan Yew Dec 18, 1964 Malaysian Parliamentary
Debates
"Political reform need not
go hand in hand with economic liberalisation. I do not believe that
if you are libertarian, full of diverse opinions, full of competing
ideas in the market place, full of sound and fury, therefore you
will succeed."
- Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, Straits Times, Aug 17,
2004
You can discover what your
enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten
you.
Eric Hoffer (1902 - 1983)
It is when power is wedded to
chronic fear that it becomes formidable.
Eric Hoffer (1902 - 1983), The Passionate State of Mind,
1954
