A Habit That Grows

Repression, Sir is a habit that grows. I am told it is like making love--it is always easier the second time! The first time there may be pangs of conscience, a sense of guilt. But once embarked on this course with constant repetition you get more and more brazen in the attack. 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


If I have to shoot 200,000 students to save China from another 100 years of disorder, so be it.

-- Same guy, Now-Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, evoking the ghost of Deng Xiaoping whilst endorsing the Tiananmen Square massacre, Straits Times, 17 August 2004

(September 16, 1923-), Singapore politician, Singapore Prime Minister 1959-1990