Lee Kuan Yew Quotes

Tythes [tax revenues] increase within any territory as the labor of that country increases, and labor does, or ought to, increase as the people do.

Except for a few oil-rich countries, no developing country has successfully modernized without slowing population growth.

The perpetual tendency of the race of man to increase beyond the means of subsistence is one of the general laws of animated nature, which we can have no reason to expect to change.

… human population growth within the ecosystem was closely analogous to the growth of malignant tumor cells within an organism: that man was acting like a cancer on the biosphere. The multiplication of human numbers certainly seems wild and uncontrolled... Four million a month - the equivalent of the population of Chicago... We seem to be doing all right at the moment; but if you could ask cancer cells, I suspect they would think they were doing fine. But when the organism dies, so do they; and for our own, selfish, practical, utilitarian reasons, I think we should be careful about how we influence the rest of the ecosystem.

Development has to rise if population is going to increase, Otherwise people will starve and all kinds of other problems.

Young people in the third world can participate in global security if they also can participate in global prosperity.

In only 37 years, our population will grow by a number equivalent to all the people in the world at the beginning of World War II.

One problem in Africa has been a small population. And the natural resources were large. So you could be as foolish as possible. But you didn’t die. You just remained there eating mangoes and bananas. Now the population in Africa is growing. So the idea that you can go on with idiotic policies is not sustainable. Because a big population needs answers.

Demography drives the economy.

In most slums and cities in developing states, population growth is outpacing the ability of the growth in pollution and sewage. Such unmet expectations in over-crowded cities can be the catalyst for civil conflict.

It is not the total number of people on the planet by itself that will determine prospects for prosperity and security in the near future. What matters is now they are distributed across age groups, their exposure and contribution to changing climate, and their opportunities for education, jobs, migration and health.

… compared to circumstances where the birth rate remains high—a decline in fertility from high to low levels allows a population to save and invest more, both in terms of human capital (ie education and training) and in terms of physical capital (eg roads, factories, machinery.)

For if we can remove the turbulent Gallics [French], our people according to exactest computations, will in another century, become even more numerous than England itself.

We are not a democratic country, but we are progressive on various issues, on women and on what I would call tolerance. The government emphasizes prosperity over political development. We think 20 percent politics/80 percent development, and I think that is healthy.

Africa, Asia and the Middle East—the lands of the rising people.

The only real growth industry in the Middle East has been population.

Turks living in Europe should have five children in order to affect Europe’s demography.

In the West, that's what's happening. The birth rate has been dropping steadily and still is. But there is still a vast amount of the world where that's not the case. And that is where the big population growth is taking place.

We will see the increasingly rapid rate of growth we've already been seeing in Colorado continue.

Healthy children are more likely to attend school and are better able to learn. Healthy workers are more productive. More productive economies mean greater stability in developing countries and improved security in the West.

Demography is destiny.

There does not have to be trade-off between growth and social protection. A democracy does not mean much if it doesn't respond to the needs and will of its people.

India will, in the next two decades become a major power and if it fails to do that external pressures will break her up

Israel was established in 1948. Then, the average income in Palestine was lower than in Egypt, for example. Today, 55 years after the establishment of Israel, the average income in Israel is 15 times higher than in Egypt. Israel fought all same wars as the Arabs and Egyptians. How come it continued to progress to the point it has become a technological force to be reckoned with? The reason is that it's a democracy.

As nations continue to develop they will require more, not less, total energy; their industrialization and rapidly growing populations will depend on it.