Friends from abroad often ask me for suggested readings re: Lee Kuan Yew.

I recommend starting by reading The Art Of Charlie Chan Hock Chye, which isn’t directly about Lee Kuan Yew – but it’s a story set in Singapore.

I’ve also recommended watching this video of talking about the 1980 SIA pilot’s strike [2:09].

I have a list of quotes that caught my attention when I was reading Hard Truths.

“All you have to do is to dissolve organizations and societies and banish and detain the key political workers in these societies. Then miraculously everything is tranquil on the surface. Then an intimidated press and the government-controlled radio together can regularly sing your praises, and slowly and steadily the people are made to forget the evil things that have already been done, or if these things are referred to again they’re conveniently distorted and distorted with impunity, because there will be no opposition to contradict.” — Lee Kuan Yew as an opposition PAP member speaking to David Marshall, Singapore Legislative Assembly, Debates, 4 October, 1956

“Well you know I get a lot of demonstrations in Singapore, my students are quite a rambunctious and spirited lot – and I think they OUGHT to be, otherwise I think there’s very little future for Singapore. It’s a young community and the young MUST be idealistic, the young MUST believe that the world should be more just, and there should be more moral rectitude in the behavior of their leaders. And they protest, often in more than just a peaceful manner, because the communist slip into my demonstrations, and you know – and windows get broken so often, and cars get overturned. At the end of the day I think decisions have got to be made by adults, not teenagers. But it’s got got to be made in such a way that when the teenagers become adults, and they look back on these decisions, they would be proud of the generation that went before them.” – LKY to American reporters in 1967 [source – jump to 15m]