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Friends from abroad are always asking me about Lee Kuan Yew. I usually hesitate to answer, because it's complicated. But I always find myself thinking, "still, I should try." Anyway, here are 4 very different quotes from him that I think help to *hint* at what he was like https://t.co/G6Xb6VK3MW
Cheong Yip Seng Joanne Leow Mary Lee Cherian George https://t.co/q9TPO3U0jm
I really can't summarize it in a tweet. Me helping you understand LKY requires me understanding not just my own context, but yours, and that's like a decades-long project. I highly recommend reading The Art Of Charlie Chan Hock Chye to get a sort of organic word-of-mouth sense https://t.co/ZMEjJ5IGg1
You cannot understand LKY without understanding SG. You have to understand that - it's small - was a island city of merchants & laborers of people far from home - it run by a British colonial administration that failed us in WW2 - it was occupied & brutalized by Japanese forces https://t.co/LECQKU2hK8
This bit from Heng Swee Keat after LKY's passing is still a very moving read 3 years on: Mr Lee's Red Box https://t.co/oNGdsTxrgR https://t.co/scN1BqBmNH
scrolling through my year's Facebook and re-discovered this great 1966 LKY speech to Singapore's school principals. I think of LKY the way I think of Steve Jobs – both simultaneously overrated and underrated, depending on what people focus on source: https://t.co/Ko2BC9h7nF https://t.co/Q7JUUEIgYG
also found some pics from 2012 when I tried to make Crying LKY memes 😂 "NSF" = full-time national servicemen, aka conscripts, aka national slaves "chao keng" = to malinger, feign illness, skive STOMP = trashy tabloid-y 'citizen journalism' site https://t.co/tsbgVLqf9T
We have a lot in common tbh https://t.co/iNx56SCPkb
"My students are quite a rambunctious lot– and I think they OUGHT to be, otherwise I think there’s little future for Singapore. The young MUST be idealistic, [...] believe that the world should be more just, there should be more moral rectitude in the behavior of their leaders." https://t.co/paJnrxZBz1
Here’s a fun quote from LKY to Deng Xiaoping: “We are only the descendants of illiterate, landless farmers in Fujian, Guangdong and other places, but many of you are the descendants of officials and scholars.” Goh Chok Tong retold it in 2009 https://t.co/qMv9tmgkoL https://t.co/nmMuQkaYOD
I had trouble sleeping last night because of this fact that @sharanvkaur pointed to me: in 1933 - when Lee Kuan Yew was 10 years old - ONE in FOUR Chinese adults in Singapore were addicted to opium. ONE IN FOUR https://t.co/gKvvBrFeXA https://t.co/M70u3zp5Yb
