America is a great nation, not just because of your power and your wealth, but because of your high ideals, openness, and generosity of spirit.
— Lee Hsien Loong
Over half a century working together on multiple issues, Singaporeans and Americans have made many enduring and close personal friendships.
With Singaporeans, you speak English, you're well-educated, the doors open everywhere.
You will always have politics being pushed towards multiracial politics because you have to field a team.
To represent the nation, you must have multiracial representation.
There is always competition for influence, but there are also opportunities for cooperation.
If we have no foreign workers, our economy suffers; our own lives suffer.
You have to understand that Singapore is quite different from Mauritius.
You have an administration which understands America's international responsibilities and interests, but you have a population which is anxious, tired, and doesn't want to bear any burden and pay any price. And that's very difficult for whoever becomes president.
Criticism, any amount, we welcome it. Come, let's have a discussion - in Parliament, all the better.
No country can be an island unto itself or world unto itself. Not even the biggest country.
China has been developing, growing in economic strength and its influence in the region. That will continue.
When people say they don't want a nanny state, they are, in fact, in a conflicted state of mind. On the one hand, they want to do whatever they want and not be stopped. On the other hand, if something goes wrong, they want to be rescued.
The emerging economies, many of them are concerned. They didn't want the money to slosh in. They are afraid when the money sloshes out, but the tapering has to take place, and we have to be able to manage it.
If we did not have a sense of who we were, how we got here, why we want to achieve something - which, on the face of it, on the logic of it, is probably not worth trying - and prove that logic wrong, then you wouldn't succeed; then you would just evaporate.
Singapore needs to be able to continue to add value to China in order for the relationship to be worthwhile for both sides.
Chinese companies - telecommunications and technology companies - are some of the best internationally. Taobao, WeChat, Huawei - not only are they large companies, but they're also very technologically advanced.
America excels not just through sheer individual talent but by working together with others.
We are looking for ways where you can have a sandbox, where you have a restricted environment within which people can try new things, and I can try new rules. And depending on what works, then I open up the sandbox, and it becomes the new rule for the whole system.
If you don't have that Singapore core, you can top up the numbers, but you are no longer Singapore. It doesn't feel Singapore - it isn't Singapore - and we can issue everybody red passports, but where is the continuity?
Basically, if you become president, you must swear to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution and what the Constitution says.
We have to work towards free trade because otherwise we will miss out on many opportunities for cooperation, and relations amongst countries will become much more difficult.
It takes time, but I have a promising team of younger Ministers, and I am quite sure from amongst them, one leader will emerge.
There will always be frictions when you have a foreign worker population or immigrant population in the country, and we have to manage that, and that requires good behaviour and adjustment both on the part of the foreign workers and the immigrants as well as on the part of the Singaporeans.
I think if you look at the Singapore projects, we wanted to do industrial parks. They have taken very long to clear the issues of land, and these become politicised, and you can't settle it, and eventually the project languishes and nothing happens.
I don't have farmers I can convert into factory workers.
Overall, we think religion is a good thing. I mean, if we were godless society, we would have many other problems; the communists found that out.
China's influence is growing; it is natural that they want to integrate more, do more business with countries around them, and the Belt and Road is a constructive way in which they can do so.
Maybe Americans feel they don't need the rest of the world anymore, and they wish it would go away. We don't have that option.
My colleagues went on the Internet, went on Facebook, and they found it helpful, and they persuaded me that I should try, so I did. It's quite fun provided you keep it in balance and... from time to time slip in a serious message.
If you go overseas and meet people, you can detect a Singaporean from across the street - the way he dresses, slightly; the way he talks; the way he acts. There is a persona which is recognizable and which we are proud of.
We are open to the world; the world is at our doorstep. It washes in, not just through the windows, but we are immersed in it completely - through the Internet, through the media, through people traveling, coming here, as well as Singaporeans going abroad.
China is developing very quickly. At every stage, its needs are different.
Everybody has his place; everybody is equal. Treated equally, equal standing, equal rights and status.
Singapore admires America's dynamism, vibrancy, and capacity for self-renewal. These qualities attract the best and brightest from around the world.
Nowadays, however strong an economy is, not all roads will lead only there. There will be other links between countries in Asia, with America, with Europe, and China will fit into this global network.
I hope that soon after the next election, amongst them they will have decided, settled, and the leader will be ready to take over from me.
You need to have good people: honourable, capable, committed in politics, standing in public office. It's not a guarantee, but it's the ideal we have to aim for.
Countries in Asia - Singapore, certainly, but many other countries too - are good friends to both China and America, and we would like to be good friends with both.
I do not owe hundreds of millions of potential foreign workers from around the world an obligation. I owe Singaporeans a responsibility.
We do have to watch to see how the foreign workers and immigrants are fitting in with our community, and you have to watch them mix so that you don't overbalance the numbers or the tone of our society.
For trade to grow, India must make a strategic decision that you want to encourage interdependence and more openness and more trade-based economy.
If you make a defamatory allegation that the Prime Minister is guilty of criminal misappropriation of pension funds of Singaporeans, that's a very serious matter.
In our society, which is multiracial and multi-religious, giving offence to another religious or ethnic group, race, language, or religion is always a very serious matter.
We are happy to see China prospering; we are happy to see China playing a constructive and positive role in the region.
At some point, there will be some other financial crisis. It's in the nature of a capitalist system.
Singaporeans generally feel more secure these days. One of our tasks is to remind them that this, a result of a continuing act of will and an appropriate sense of insecurity, is very helpful.
It has to be good to live in Singapore because otherwise, nobody will stand for it.
Whichever country we are talking to, we are concerned with economic cooperation, how to deepen our mutual dependence, how to find new areas of win-win.
China is a very big and complicated country; it's not easy to govern. But with courage and unity, China will certainly overcome all difficulties and continue to develop and move forward.
