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Lee Kuan Yew

Lee Kuan Yew (16 September 1923 – 23 March 2015) was a Singaporean politician. He was the Secretary-general of the People's Action Party (1954–1992) and Singapore Prime Minister (1959–1990), Senior Minister (1990–2004), Minister Mentor (2004–2011).

1950s

 * But we either believe in democracy or we don't. If we do, then, we must say categorically, without qualification, that no restraint from the any democratic processes, other than by the ordinary law of the land, should be allowed... If you believe in democracy, you must believe in it unconditionally. If you believe that men should be free, then, they should have the right of free association, of free speech, of free publication. Then, no law should permit those democratic processes to be set at nought, and no excuse, whether of security, should allow a government to be deterred from doing what it knows to be right, and what it must know to be right...
 * Lee Kuan Yew, Legislative Assembly Debates (27 April 1955)

 * If it is not totalitarian to arrest a man and detain him, when you cannot charge him with any offence against any written law - if that is not what we have always cried out against in Fascist states - then what is it?… If we are to survive as a free democracy, then we must be prepared, in principle, to concede to our enemies - even those who do not subscribe to our views - as much constitutional rights as you concede yourself.
 * Opposition leader Lee Kuan Yew, Legislative Assembly Debates (21 Sept 1955)

 * 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 we say that we believe in democracy, if we say that the fabric of a democratic society is one which allows for the free play of idea...then, in the name of all the gods, give that free play a chance to work within the constitutional framework.
 * Opposition leader Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore Legislative Assembly (4 October 1956)

 * Repression can only go up to a point. When it becomes too acute, the instruments of repression, namely the army and the police, have been proved time and time again in history to have turned their guns on their masters.
 * Opposition leader Lee Kuan Yew Straits Times (5 May 1959)

1960s

 * If I were in authority in Singapore indefinitely without having to ask those who are governed whether they like what is being done, then I have not the slightest doubt that I could govern much more effectively in their interests.
 * Radio Interview, 1960. Quoted in South-East Asia: A Political Profile, Damien Kingsbury (2001, p. 337)

 * Let us get down to fundamentals. Is this an open, or is this a closed society? Is it a society where men can preach ideas - novel, unorthodox, heresies, to established churches and established governments - where there is a constant contest for men's hearts and minds on the basis of what is right, of what is just, of what is in the national interests, or is it a closed society where the mass media - the newspapers, the journals, publications, TV, radio - either bound by sound or by sight, or both sound and sight, men's minds are fed with a constant drone of sycophantic support for a particular orthodox political philosophy? I am talking of the principle of the open society, the open debate, ideas, not intimidation, persuasion not coercion...
 * Lee Kuan Yew, Before Singapore's independence, Malaysian Parliamentary Debates (18 December 1964)

 * How does the Malay in the kampong find his way out into this modernised civil society? By becoming servants of the 0.3 per cent who would have the money to hire them to clean their shoe, open their motorcar doors?
 * Lee Kuan Yew in the Parliament of Malaysia, 1965

 * Of course there are Chinese millionaires in big cars and big houses. Is it the answer to make a few Malay millionaires with big cars and big houses? How does telling a Malay bus driver that he should support the party of his Malay director (UMNO) and the Chinese bus conductor to join another party of his Chinese director (MCA) - how does that improve the standards of the Malay bus driver and the Chinese bus conductor who are both workers in the same company? If we delude people into believing that they are poor because there are no Malay rights or because opposition members oppose Malay rights, where are we going to end up? You let people in the kampongs believe that they are poor because we don't speak Malay, because the government does not write in Malay, so he expects a miracle to take place in 1967 (the year Malay would become the national and sole official language in Malaysia). The moment we all start speaking Malay, he is going to have an uplift in the standard of living, and if doesn't happen, what happens then? Meanwhile, whenever there is a failure of economic, social and educational policies, you come back and say, oh, these wicked Chinese, Indian and others opposing Malay rights. They don't oppose Malay rights. They, the Malay, have the right as Malaysian citizens to go up to the level of training and education that the more competitive societies, the non-Malay society, has produced. That is what must be done, isn't it? Not to feed them with this obscurantist doctrine that all they have got to do is to get Malay rights for the few special Malays and their problem has been resolved.
 * Lee Kuan Yew speaking in the Parliament of Malaysia (1965)

 * They (the Malay extremists) have triggered off something basic and fundamental. Malaysia — to whom does it belong? To Malaysians. But who are Malaysians? I hope I am, Mr Speaker, Sir. But sometimes, sitting in this chamber, I doubt whether I am allowed to be a Malaysian. This is the doubt that hangs over many minds, and the next contest, if this goes on, will be on very different lines.
 * Lee Kuan Yew in the Parliament of Malaysia (1965)

 * Once emotions are set in motion, and men pitted against men along these unspoken lines, you will have the kind of warfare that will split the nation from top to bottom and undo Malaysia. Everybody knows it. I don't have to say it. It is the unspoken word!
 * Lee Kuan Yew in the Parliament of Malaysia, 1965

 * According to history, Malays began to migrate to Malaysia in noticeable numbers only about 700 years ago. Of the 39 percent Malays in Malaysia today, about one-third are comparatively new immigrants like the secretary-general of UMNO, Dato' Syed Ja'afar Albar, who came to Malaya from Indonesia just before the war at the age of more than thirty. Therefore it is wrong and illogical for a particular racial group to think that they are more justified to be called Malaysians and that the others can become Malaysian only through their favour.
 * Lee Kuan Yew (in 1964 or 1965), — Ye, Lin-Sheng (2003). The Chinese Dilemma, p. 43. East West Publishing. ISBN 0-9751646-1-9.

 * For me, it is a moment of anguish. All my life, my whole adult life, I believed in merger and unity of the two territories.
 * when Lee announced the separation of Singapore from Malaysia (9 August 1965), as quoted in The Theatre and the State in Singapore: Orthodoxy and Resistance, Terence Chong

 * Three women were brought to the Singapore General Hospital, each in the same condition and needing a blood transfusion. The first, a Southeast Asian was given the transfusion but died a few hours later. The second, a South Asian was also given a transfusion but died a few days later. The third, an East Asian, was given a transfusion and survived. That is the X factor in development.
 * (1967), cited in Lee Kuan Yew: race, culture and genes, Michael Barr in Journal of Contemporary Asia (January 1999)

 * One of the crucial yardsticks by which we shall have to judge the results of the new abortion law combined with the voluntary sterilisation law will be whether it tends to raise or lower the total quality of our population. We must encourage those who earn less than $200 per month and cannot afford to nurture and educate many children never to have more than two. Intelligent application of these laws can help reduce the distortion that has already set in. Until the less educated themselves are convinced and realise that they should concentrate their limited resources on one or two to give their children the maximum chance to climb up the educational ladder, their children will always be at the bottom of the economic scale. It is unlikely that the results will be discernible before five years. Nor will the effect be felt before fifteen to twenty years. But we will regret the time lost if we do not now take the first tentative steps towards correcting a trend which can leave our society with a large number of the physically, intellectually and culturally anaemic.
 * Abortion Bill (29 December 1969). As reported from Select Committee, Singapore Parliament Reports

 * The Americans should know the character of the men they are dealing with in Singapore and not get themselves further dragged into calumny ... They are not dealing with Ngo Dinh Diem or Syngman Rhee. You do not buy and sell this Government.
 * (2 September 1965), in reaction to a $3.3 million bribe offered by the CIA in exchange for the release of an agent

1970s

 * The ending of colonialism does not in itself result in social and economic progress: it provides the opportunities for it.
 * Speech to the non-aligned summit in Lusaka (1970), quoted in "The man who worked an economic miracle", The Times (20 December 1984), p. 8

 * What role would men and governments in new countries like the mass media to play?... The mass media can help to present Singapore's problems simply and clearly and then explain how if they support certain programmes and policies these problems can be solved. More important, we want the mass media to reinforce, not to undermine, the cultural values and social attitudes being inculcated in our schools and universities.
 * Address To The General Assembly Of The International Press Institute At Helsinki Wednesday (9 June 1971)
 * Freedom of the press, freedom of the news media, must be subordinated to the overriding needs of the integrity of Singapore, and to the primacy of purpose of an elected government.
 * Address To The General Assembly Of The International Press Institute At Helsinki Wednesday (9 June 1971)

 * I don't know why Amnesty International always picks on people who are not very popular with Communists.
 * Statement (1974), quoted in "The man who worked an economic miracle", The Times (20 December 1984), p. 8

 * If all the 300 (top civil servants and political elite) were to crash in one jumbo jet, then Singapore will disintegrate.
 * On how Singapore does not need multiparty politics (1975)

 * We have a reputation, which I hope is somewhat deserved, that we are a kind of little Switzerland in South-East Asia.
 * Speech to the Commonwealth conference (1975), quoted in "The man who worked an economic miracle", The Times (20 December 1984), p. 8

 * Our unions are different: if we had British-style trade unionism we should be bankrupt, finished.
 * Statement (1976), quoted in "The man who worked an economic miracle", The Times (20 December 1984), p. 8

1980s

 * Whoever governs Singapore must have that iron in him. Or give it up. This is not a game of cards! This is your life and mine! I've spent a whole lifetime building this and as long as I'm in charge, nobody is going to knock it down.
 * Rally in 1980, related to the then-ongoing Singapore Airlines pilot strikes due to salary issue

 * Look, Jeyaretnam can't win the infighting. I'll tell you why. WE are in charge. Every government ministry and department is under our control. And in the infighting, he will go down for the count every time... I will make him crawl on his bended knees, and beg for mercy.
 * as recounted by former President C. V. Devan Nair (1981), as quoted in Beyond suspicion?: the Singapore judiciary, Francis T. Seow

 * Let us not deceive ourselves: our talent profile is nowhere near that of, say, the Jews or the Japanese in America. The exceptional number of Nobel Prize winners who are Jews is no accident. It is also no accident that a high percentage, sometimes 50%, of faculty members in the top American universities on both the east and west coasts are Jews. And the number of high calibre Japanese academics, professionals, and business executives is out of all proportion to the percentage of Japanese in the total American population
 * "The Search for Talent" (12 August 1982)

 * If you don't include your women graduates in your breeding pool and leave them on the shelf, you would end up a more stupid society... So what happens? There will be less bright people to support dumb people in the next generation. That's a problem.
 * National Day Rally (1983). Cited in The Coming Population Crash: And Our Planet's Surprising Future, Fred Pearce

 * I make no apologies that the PAP is the Government and the Government is the PAP.
 * (quoted in Milne and Mauzy 1990, p. 85)

 * Equal employment opportunities, yes, but we shouldn't get our women into jobs where they cannot, at the same time, be mothers...our most valuable asset is in the ability of our people, yet we are frittering away this asset through the unintended consequences of changes in our education policy and equal opportunities for women. This has affected their traditional role … as mothers, the creators and protectors of the next generation.

 * I have said this on many a previous occasion: that had the mix in Singapore been different, had it been 75% Indians, 15% Malays and the rest Chinese, it would not have worked. Because they believe in the politics of contention, of opposition. But because the culture was such that the populace sought a practical way out of their difficulties, therefore it has worked.

 * (Without the CPF), Singaporeans would buy enormous quantities of clothes, shoes, furniture, television sets, radio, tape recorders, hi-fis, washing machines, motor cars. They would have no substantial or permanent asset to show for it.
 * Asian Wall Street Journal, Oct 21 1985

 * Mah Bow Tan, age 16, took his 'O' levels - six distinctions, two credits. Mr Chiam, age 18 - 1953 I think - six credits, one pass. He passed his English language, not bad. The next year, in 1954, he worked harder, he got a credit for his English. So you see, it's not because he doesn't know English that he found difficult in expressing himself. It's what's inside here *tapping his head*. And you better search your inside here before you cast your votes. Goodbye and good luck.
 * Speech at Fullerton Square dissing Chiam See tong (19 December 1984)

 * It is necessary to try and put some safeguards into the way in which people use their votes to bargain, to coerce, to push, to jostle and get what they want without running the risk of losing the services of the government, because one day, by mistake, they will lose the services of the government... You unscramble Singapore, well, you'll never put Humpty Dumpty together again
 * On tweaking the one-man one-vote system after losing 2 seats to non-PAP Candidates, The Straits Times (24 December 1984)

 * We have to lock up people, without trial, whether they are communists, whether they are language chauvinists, whether they are religious extremists. If you don't do that, the country would be in ruins
 * (1986)

 * I am often accused of interfering in the private lives of citizens. Yes, if I did not, had I not done that, we wouldn't be here today. And I say without the slightest remorse, that we wouldn't be here, we would not have made economic progress, if we had not intervened on very personal matters - who your neighbour is, how you live, the noise you make, how you spit, or what language you use. We decide what is right. Never mind what the people think.
 * Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew Straits Times (20 April 1987)

 * Even from my sick bed, even if you are going to lower me into the grave and I feel something is going wrong, I will get up.
 * 1988 National Day Rally, when he discussed the leadership transition to Goh Chok Tong in 1990. As quoted in The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia: Volume 2, The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

 * "Malays abhor the state of celibacy. To remain unmarried was and is considered shameful. Everyone must be married at some time or other. The result is that whether a person is fit or unfit for marriage, he or she still marries and reproduces. An idiot or a simpleton is often married off to an old widower, ostensibly to take care of him in his old age. If this is not possible, backward relatives are paired off in marriage. These people survive, reproduce and propagate their species. The cumulative effect of this can be left to the imagination."

 * We allow American journalists in Singapore in order to report Singapore to their fellow countrymen...But we cannot allow them to assume a role in Singapore that the American media play in America, that is, that of invigilator, adversary and inquisitor of the administration.
 * National Day speech in 1984. Quoted in S. Balakrishna Seventy Years of Secularism (2018).

1990s

 * With few exceptions, democracy has not brought good government to new developing countries...What Asians value may not necessarily be what Americans or Europeans value. Westerners value the freedoms and liberties of the individual. As an Asian of Chinese cultural backround, my values are for a government which is honest, effective and efficient.
 * Lee Kuan Yew in speech "Democracy, Human Rights and the Realities", Tokyo (10 November 1992)

 * Let me give you an example that encapsulates the whole difference between America and Singapore. America has a vicious drug problem. How does it solve it? It goes around the world helping other anti-narcotic agencies to try and stop the suppliers... Singapore does not have that option. What we can do is to pass a law which says that any customs officer or policeman who sees anybody in Singapore behaving suspiciously... can require that man to have his urine tested. If the sample is found to contain drugs, the man immediately goes for treatment. In America if you did that it would be an invasion of the individual's rights and you would be sued.
 * It's not that we don't have single mothers here. We are also caught in the same social problems of change when we educate our women and they become independent financially and no longer need to put up with unhappy marriages. But there is grave disquiet when we break away from tested norms, and the tested norm is the family unit. It is the building brick of society. Governments will come, governments will go, but this endures.
 * Lee Kuan Yew Interview with Fareed Zakaria Foreign Policy (1994)

 * And now in America itself after 30 years of experimenting with the Great Society programmes, there is widespread crime and violence, children kill each other with guns, neigbourhoods are insecure, old people feel forgotten, families are falling apart. And the media attacks the integrity and character of your leaders with impunity, drags down all those in authority and blames everyone but itself.
 * Lee Kuan Yew Interview with Nathan Gardels Global Viewpoint (26 September 1995)

 * I have visited (Burma) and I know that there is only one instrument of government, and that is the army...If I were Aung San Suu Kyi, I think I'd rather be behind a fence and be a symbol than after two or three years, be found impotent.
 * SM Lee Kuan Yew, Reuters (6 June 1996), which sparked a flurry of protests from Burmese students.

 * Ministers who deal with billions of dollars cannot be paid low salaries without risking a system malfunction. Low salaries will not attract able men who are or can be successful in their professions or business. Low salaries will draw in the hypocrites who sweet talk their way into power in the name of public services, but once in charge will show their true colour, and ruin the country. This has happened in many countries.
 * SM Lee Kuan Yew Speech to the National Trade Union Congress at the Singapore Conference Hall, as reported by the Frontier Center for Public Policy (19 July 1996)

 * Mine is a very matter-of-fact approach to the problem. If you can select a population and they're educated and they're properly brought up, then you don't have to use too much of the stick because they would already have been trained. It's like with dogs. You train it in a proper way from small. It will know that it's got to leave, go outside to pee and to defecate. No, we are not that kind of society. We had to train adult dogs who even today deliberately urinate in the lifts.
 * Lee Kuan Yew on Singapore society, The Man & His Ideas (1997)

 * Supposing Catherine Lim was writing about me and not the prime minister...She would not dare, right? Because my posture, my response has been such that nobody doubts that if you take me on, I will put on knuckle-dusters and catch you in a cul de sac...Anybody who decides to take me on needs to put on knuckle dusters. If you think you can hurt me more than I can hurt you, try. There is no other way you can govern a Chinese society.
 * SM Lee Kuan Yew The Man and His Ideas (1997)

 * Supposing I'm now 21, 22, what would I do? I would not be absorbed in wanting to change life in Singapore. I'm not responsible for Singapore...Why should I go and undertake this job and spend my whole life pushing this for a lot of people for whom nothing is good enough? I will have a fall-back position, which many are doing - have a house in Perth or Vancouver or Sydney, or an apartment in London, in case I need some place suddenly, and think about whether I go on to America.
 * SM Lee Kuan Yew The Man & His Ideas (1997)

 * What people mean by consultation is an imitation of what they see in America; pressure groups and lobby groups..It's an unthinking adoption of Western practices of development without any pruning and modification to suit our circumstances.
 * Lee Kuan Yew The Man & His Ideas (1997)

 * The Bell curve is a fact of life. The blacks on average score 85 per cent on IQ and it is accurate, nothing to do with culture. The whites score on average 100. Asians score more … the Bell curve authors put it at least 10 points higher. These are realities that, if you do not accept, will lead to frustration because you will be spending money on wrong assumptions and the results cannot follow.
 * Lee Kuan Yew The Man & His Ideas (1997)

 * I started off believing all men were equal. I now know that's the most unlikely thing ever to have been, because millions of years have passed over evolution, people have scattered across the face of this earth, been isolated from each other, developed independently, had different intermixtures between races, peoples, climates, soils... I didn't start off with that knowledge. But by observation, reading, watching, arguing, asking, that is the conclusion I've come to.
 * Lee Kuan Yew The Man & His Ideas (1997)

 * But if you are a troublemaker... it's our job to politically destroy you. Put it this way. As long as JB Jeyaretnam [Workers' Party leader] stands for what he stands for -- a thoroughly destructive force for me -- we will knock him. There are two ways of playing this. One, a you attack the policies; two, you attack the system. Jeyaretnam was attacking the system, he brought the Chief Justice into it. If I want to fix you, do I need the Chief Justice to fix you? Everybody knows that in my bag I have a hatchet, and a very sharp one. You take me on, I take my hatchet, we meet in the cul-de-sac. That's the way I had to survive in the past. That's the way the communists tackled me. He brought the Chief Justice into the political arena.
 * SM Lee Kuan Yew The Man & His Ideas (1997)

 * So when people say, 'Oh, ask the people!' It's childish rubbish. We are leaders. We know the consequences. You mean that ice-water man knows the consequences of his vote? They say people can think for themselves? Do you honestly believe that the chap who can't pass primary six knows the consequences of his choice when he answers a question viscerally on language, culture and religion?
 * Lee Kwan Yew The Man & His Ideas (1998)

 * I bent over a chair and was given three of the best with my trousers on. I did not think he lightened his strokes. I have never understood why Western educationists are so much against corporal punishment. It did my fellow students and me no harm.
 * The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew (1998)

 * I have never been over concerned or obsessed with opinion polls or popularity polls. I think a leader who is, is a weak leader. Between being loved and being feared, I have always believed Machiavelli was right. If nobody is afraid of me, I’m meaningless.
 * The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew (1998), as quoted by Business Insider

 * I pointed to an article with bold headlines reporting that the police had refused to allow the PAP to hold a rally at Empress Place, and then to the last paragraph where in small type it added the meeting would take place where we were now. I compared this with a prominent report about an SPA rally. This was flagrant bias."
 * SM Lee Kuan Yew The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew (1998)

 * If, for instance, you put in a Malay officer who's very religious and who has family ties in Malaysia in charge of a machine gun unit, that's a very tricky business. We've got to know his background... I'm saying these things because they are real, and if I don't think that, and I think even if today the Prime Minister doesn't think carefully about this, we could have a tragedy.
 * SM Lee Kuan Yew Straits Times (19 September 1999) on Malays in the Singapore Armed Forces

2000s

 * If Singapore is a nanny state, then I am proud to have fostered one.
 * Lee Kuan Yew to critics who accused him of governing Singapore like a nanny state, From Third World to First, The Singapore Story: 1965-2000 Lee Kuan Yew. 2000)

 * If you can't think because you can't chew, try a banana
 * Responding to a BBC reporter who suggested that Singapore's draconian laws (including the ban on chewing gum) could stifle the people's creativity (2000).

 * I ignore polling as a method of government. I think that shows a certain weakness of mind - an inability to chart a course whichever way the wind blows, whichever way the media encourages the people to go, you follow. If you can't force or are unwilling to force your people to follow you, with or without threats, you are not a leader.
 * SM Lee Kuan Yew Success Stories (2002)

 * He picked up from me a certain way of thinking, certain logic, certain cut of mind. He has got from his mother a facility with words, and a certain intuition. So please do give him some slack, if you find that he thinks slowly, and speaks even more slowly.
 * Lee Kuan Yew on Lee Hsien Loong, The Straits Times (22 June 2004)

 * Political reform need not go hand in hand with economic liberalisation. I do not believe that if you are libertarian, full of diverse opinions, full of competing ideas in the market place, full of sound and fury, therefore you will succeed.
 * Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, The Straits Times (17 August 2004)

 * He took over, and he said: 'If I have to shoot 200,000 students to save China from another 100 years of disorder, so be it.'
 * Recalling how former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping dealt with the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, The Straits Times, Aug 17, 2004

 * At the end of the day, we are so many digits in the machine. The point is – are these digits stronger than the competitors' digits?
 * MM Lee Kuan Yew on Singapore workers, History of Singapore (2005)

 * Please do not assume that you can change governments. Young people don’t understand this.
 * MM Lee Kuan Yew, after 2006 Elections cited by The Washington Post

 * When I call a man openly, you're a liar, you're dishonest, and you do not dare to sue me, there's something basically wrong. And I will repeat it anywhere and you can't go and say, oh, I have apologised; let's move on. Can you commit a dishonourable -- maybe even one which is against the law -- an illegal act and say, let's move on because I've apologised? You may move on but you're going to move on out of politics in time.
 * MM Lee Kuan Yew on James Gomez, Channelnewsasia (May 2006)

 * Without the elected president and if there is a freak result, within two or three years, the army would have to come in and stop it
 * MM Lee Kuan Yew on what would happen if a profligate opposition government touched Singapore's vast monetary reserves, "Lee Kuan Yew defends PAP's Political Dominance", Reuters (16 September 2006)

 * That was the year the British decided to get out and sell everything. So I immediately held an election. I knew the people will be dead scared. And I won my bet big-time.
 * On winning 88% of the votes in 1968 (actual share was 84.43%), The Straits Times, (7 March 2007)

 * You know, the cure for all this talk is really a good dose of incompetent government. You get that alternative and you'll never put Singapore together again: Humpty Dumpty cannot be put together again... your asset values will disappear, your apartments will be worth a fraction of what they were, and our women will become maids in other people's countries, foreign workers.
 * Justifying million-dollar pay hike for Singapore ministers (The Straits Times, 5 April 2007)

 * Singaporeans, if I can chose an analogy, we are the hard disk of a computer, the foreign talent are the megabytes you add to your storage capacity. So your computer never hangs because you got enormous storage capacity,
 * On accepting foreign talent (The Straits Times, 22 April 2007)

 * When you're Singapore and your existence depends on performance — extraordinary performance, better than your competitors — when that performance disappears because the system on which it's been based becomes eroded, then you've lost everything... I try to tell the younger generation that and they say the old man is playing the same record, we've heard it all before. I happen to know how we got here and I know how we can unscramble it.
 * On one election result in Singapore, The Straits Times (26 June 2008), and "Opposition would ruin Singapore: Lee Kuan Yew" in AFP report at Google News (26 June 2008)

 * There is a conspiracy to do us in. Why?... They see us as a threat to the rest of Singapore.
 * On why Human Rights Groups criticise Singapore's governance Agence France-Presse, (12 July 2008)

 * India is an intrinsic part of this unfolding new world order. India can no longer be dismissed as a “wounded civilisation”, in the hurtful phrase of a westernised non resident Indian author (V.S. Naipaul).
 * Lee Kuan Yew - At the 37th Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Lecture on 21st Nov 2005 in New Delhi, quoted at

2010s

 * India is a creation of the British Raj and the railway system it built, and therefore it has its limitations.
 * Lew Kuan Yew answers people in India during the South Asian Diaspora Convention (2011).

 * What if Mr Mah is unable to defend himself, he deserves to lose? No country in the world has given its citizens an asset as valuable as what we've given every family here. And if you say that policy is at fault, you must be daft.
 * when asked about a Straits Times report that cited keen opposition interest in contesting Tampines GRC, which National Development Minister Mah Bow Tan helms, so that they can raise the affordability of public housing as an election issue. Prime Minister's Office (28 January 2010)

 * The final verdict will not be in the obituaries. The final verdict will be when the PhD students dig out the archives, read my old papers, assess what my enemies have said, sift the evidence and seek the truth. I'm not saying that everything I did was right, but everything I did was for an honourable purpose
 * Interview with The New York Times (September 2010)

 * I have to speak candidly to be of value, but I do not want to offend the Muslim community... I think we were progressing very nicely until the surge of Islam came, and if you asked me for my observations, the other communities have easier integration – friends, inter-marriages and so on – than Muslims... I would say, today, we can integrate all religions and races, except Islam.
 * from his book Lee Kuan Yew: Hard Truths to Keep Singapore Going (Asia One, 8 March 2011)

 * Hard Truths was a book based on 32 hours of interviews over a period of two years. I made this one comment on the Muslims integrating with other communities probably two or three years ago. Ministers and MPs, both Malay and non-Malay, have since told me that Singapore Malays have indeed made special efforts to integrate with the other communities, especially since 9/11, and that my call is out of date. I stand corrected. I hope that this trend will continue in the future.
 * statement correcting previous commentsed on how well-integrated Malay-Muslims are in Singapore (Asia One, 8 March 2011)

 * If Aljunied decides to go that way, well Aljunied has five years to live and repent.
 * warning voters in Aljunied GRC on the consequence of voting for the alternative Workers' Party, which eventually defeated the PAP. Yahoo News (30 April 2011)

 * At the end of the day, if you are in Aljunied, ask yourself: Do you want one MP, one Non-Constituency MP, one celebrity who has been away 30 years, and two unknowns to look after you? Or would you prefer me and my hand-picked colleagues?
 * [http://sg.news.yahoo.com/aljunied-voters-will-regret-choosing-wp--mm-lee.html Comments about the alternative Workers' Party candidates contesting in the Aljunied GRC for General Elections 2011, Yahoo News (30 April 2011)

 * I’m dead by then. There’ll be different voices, different standpoints, but I stand by my record. I did some sharp and hard things to get things right. Maybe some people disapproved of it. Too harsh, but a lot was at stake and I wanted the place to succeed, that’s all. At the end of the day, what have I got? A successful Singapore. What have I given up? My life.
 * On how history will assess him, in Hard Truths to Keep Singapore Going (2011)

Quotes about Lee Kuan Yew

 * An intellectual through and through, he had been the most brilliant schoolboy of his age in Singapore... He took a Double First in Law at Cambridge... Lee was brought up in English, which he speaks far better than most British politicians, and learned Mandarin as well as Malay only when he entered politics. Yet he is immensely proud that his Chinese ancestry makes him part of the oldest, and, as he would say, the greatest culture in the world. He is especially proud of being of the Hakka people, which originated in North China. The Hakka are the Prussians of China, and there is a lot of the Prussian in Lee Kuan Yew. He believes in discipline and hard work.
 * Denis Healey, The Time of My Life (1989; 1990), p. 286
 * Lee Kuan Yew (born 1923) narrowly escaped execution by the occupying Japanese in 1942. Lee shaped the evolution of an impoverished, multiethnic port city at the edge of the Pacific, surrounded by hostile neighbors. Under his tutelage, Singapore emerged as a secure, well-administered and prosperous city-state with a shared national identity providing unity amid cultural diversity.
 * Henry Kissinger, Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy, pp. 22

 * [H]e was the most important Asian statesman of his generation, an achievement all the more remarkable for being based on the small state of Singapore. He had his own kind of democracy to be sure, but his strong commitment to free-market capitalism had done wonders for the tiny island which he governed.
 * Margaret Thatcher, The Path to Power (1995), p. 386

title: Lee Kuan Yew


text:
NASA

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is the agency responsible for the civilian space program of the United States, and for its long-term aerospace research. It was established by the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 29 July 1958. It has run the United States’s space exploration programs, including the world’s first Moon landings, ever since. It is one of three government space agencies, including the ones of the Soviet Union/Russia and China, to have sent humans into space. It is currently overseeing the International Space Station and the Artemis program. It is currently led by Administrator Bill Nelson, who reports to President Joe Biden.

Quotes

 * For the benefit of all.
 * NASA motto

 * The Congress hereby declares that it is the policy of the United States that activities in space should be devoted to peaceful purposes for the benefit of all mankind.
 * National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958, which created NASA, signed by US President Dwight D. Eisenhower (29 July 1958)

 * To improve life here. To extend life to there. To find life beyond.
 * The NASA Vision

 * To understand and protect our home planet, To explore the universe and search for life, To inspire the next generation of explorers.
 * NASA Mission

 * Shaping the Future: Launching New Endeavors to Inspire the Next Generation of Explorers.
 * Motto of NASA's Office of Education

 * NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Where else but in Texas would men set up to administer space?
 * James Cameron, in Cameron Country, broadcast on BBC TV, July 12, 1969.

 * We lack any sort of device that can... detect life. We don't have a life meter. ...We don't have a general pupose life meter that can detect life as we don't know it. Obviously, if it's life as we know it, there are all sorts of features. ...NASA plans a mission to... ... which has a plume of organic material spewing out, and they want to fly through that plume... The question is, what are they going to put onboard that would return a result "Yes, we have found life"... How would you do that? What exactly do you measure?
 * Paul Davies, "The Demon in the Machine by Paul Davies" (Sep 7, 2019) 6th International FQXi Conference, "Mind Matters: Intelligence and Agency in the Physical World" 3:22.

 * It [Traveling to Mars] is important for our future. If the dinosaurs had a space program, they'd still be here.
 * in a Reddit IAmA.

 * There's been a lot of discussion about NASA culture and changing that. I think our culture has always been one of trying to do a very difficult job and do it well.
 * Mark E. Kelly in  an interview prior to STS-121

FIRST SET FOOT UPON THE MOON JULY 1969, A.D. WE CAME IN PEACE FOR ALL MANKIND.
 * HERE MEN FROM THE PLANET EARTH
 * Lunar landing commemorative plaque of Apollo 11, originally suggested and designed by NASA's head of technical services Jack Kinzler.

 * Well, today physicists peering into the infinitely small realms of subatomic particles find reaffirmations of religious faith. Astronomers build a space telescope that can see to the edge of the universe and possibly back to the moment of creation. So, yes, this nation remains fully committed to America's space program. We're going forward with our shuttle flights. We're going forward to build our space station. And we are going forward with research on a new Orient Express that could, by the end of the next decade, take off from Dulles Airport, accelerate up to 25 times the speed of sound, attaining low Earth orbit or flying to Tokyo within 2 hours. And the same technology transforming our lives can solve the greatest problem of the 20th century. A security shield can one day render nuclear weapons obsolete and free mankind from the prison of nuclear terror. America met one historic challenge and went to the Moon. Now America must meet another: to make our strategic defense real for all the citizens of planet Earth.
 * Ronald Reagan, 1986 State of the Union Address

Artemis program

 * Introductory page of the official Artemis program site at NASA

 * With Artemis missions, NASA will land the first woman and first person of color on the Moon, using innovative technologies to explore more of the lunar surface than ever before. We will collaborate with commercial and international partners and establish the first long-term presence on the Moon. Then, we will use what we learn on and around the Moon to take the next giant leap: sending the first astronauts to Mars.

 * We’re going back to the Moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, and inspiration for a new generation of explorers: the Artemis Generation. While maintaining American leadership in exploration, we will build a global alliance and explore deep space for the benefit of all.

 * We will build an Artemis Base Camp on the surface and the Gateway in lunar orbit. These elements will allow our robots and astronauts to explore more and conduct more science than ever before.

 * All that we build, all that we study, all that we do, prepares us to go.

 * OUR SUCCESS WILL CHANGE THE WORLD

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: NASA


text:
User:121a0012

Articles I created or contributed significantly to include:
 * Gyles Brandreth
 * Stephen Jay Gould
 * Jeremy Hardy
 * Hisham Matar
 * Julian May
 * James Nicoll
 * Michael Pollan
 * Oliver Sacks

Some convenience links for Wikiquote maintenance work:
 * Politics
 * Votes for deletion
 * Special:Newpages
 * Special:Shortpages
 * Special:Uncategorizedpages
 * Category:Wikiquote cleanup

 * See also: my user page on Wikipedia, my user page on Commons

Some quotations I happen to like:
 * A household is a business given over to caring for small, temporarily insane people, a business subject to cash-flow problems, endless legal harassments, run by people who expect to have sex with each other, who occupy the same space, and who go nuts when either party has sex with anyone else.
 * Clark Glymour, "What Went Wrong? Reflections on Science by Observation and The Bell Curve", Philosophy of Science 65 (1998), pp. 1–32

 * The obvious solution [to the problems of the U.S. educational system] is not privatization or more decentralization, but national educational standards of accomplishment with uniform national tests, and national school funding. More bureaucrats the Republicans say, as though we are better off with real estate brokers running school boards and fighting, as Herrnstein and Murray point out, against more homework.  I say a public school that worked as well as the post office would be a godsend.
 * ibid., p. 29

 * It may be that the jury would incline to regard a practising lawyer as a man of probity whose word was prima facie worthy of belief. But the belief of lawyers in their own probity is not universally shared, and there are those who believe them to be capable of almost any chicanery or sharp practice.
 * Lord Bingham of Cornhill, writing for the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, in Singh v. The State (Trinidad and Tobago) [2005] UKPC 35 (03 August 2005)

 * You can't get a leopard to change his spots. In fact, now that I come to think of it, you can't really get a leopard to appreciate the notion that it has spots. You can explain it carefully to the leopard, but it will just sit there looking at you, knowing that you are made of meat. After a while it will perhaps kill you.
 * Geoffrey Pullum, "Less than three years: a policy revision", Language Log (2007-01-04)

 * This makes for exceedingly confusing maps, especially since unified maps of all the train lines in Tokyo are nigh-impossible to find, and look like the aftermath of someone throwing a bushel of kittens into a yarn factory.
 * Dave Brown, Usenet article <4sd9pe.209.ln@phb.lart.ca> (2007-01-25)

 * [Dragonlance:] It's like someone took 8bit Theatre, then removed all the Story and all the Funny, leaving only distilled stupid.
 * Douglas Henke, Usenet article <x7fy8yghbd.fsf@kharendaen.krall.org> (2007-02-22)

 * It takes a strong stomach to listen to the full CD-length version of "Requiem for a sleeve bearing".
 * Matt Roberds, Usenet article <OLPWi.1023$mv3.683@newsfe10.phx> (2007-11-02)

 * The ablaut distinction between lie and lay (and the parallel ones sit / set and rise / raise, all of which relate irregular inchoatives referring to body motion with regular derived causatives) is old, and therefore venerable to some. It's sacred morphology, like whom or Meā culpā!, and unnatural only to those who don't find history natural. Thus it becomes a badge also of education and social status in the Anglophone world.
 * John Lawler, Language Log comment (2008-08-12)

 * The Fox agenda is distinctive not because Fox makes stuff up (though it's good at that) but because Fox builds and emphasizes particular categories, whether the stories in them are true or not. It's the national clearinghouse for stories about random episodic danger to children and pregnant moms. Fox scours the British tabloid press for stories about Muslim efforts to stamp out Barbie, Valentine's Day and the Three Little Pigs so you don't have to! Fox's agenda keeps you up to speed on the War On Christmas, the ACLU's efforts to turn your kids into socialist zombie apostles of sex, drugs and treason, and the doings of various unrepentant terrorists.
 * Fred Vultee, "Una tarántula en un plato de nata", Headsup: The Blog (2009-03-14)

 * Science journalism isn't very good, but most of it isn't malificent. Fox journalism, on the other hand, is -- oh, how to put this? -- corrupt: anti-science and pro-stupid, not to mention nativist, pro-disease and a range of other unseemly traits, all in the service of its political masters. You can fix stupid, or at least you can try, but you can't fix evil.
 * Fred Vultee, "Science journalism: Dr. Evil edition", Headsup: The Blog (2009-05-15)

 * When you're a narcissist, every doorknob becomes a mirror.
 * Geoffrey Nunberg, "The I's Don't Have It", Fresh Air (2009-11-18)

 * People who cling to the idea that Fox is a form of journalism might wish to ask why Fox seems bent on ensuring that the population is scared and stupid. Put more simply: Why does Fox hate America?
 * Fred Vultee, "Fear factor: reeling in the panic", Headsup: The Blog (2010-01-08)

 * David Brooks is a cartoonishly bad writer, true. But even an odious heap of freshly composted George Will like this column shouldn't have its shoelaces tied together in the editing process.
 * Fred Vultee, "First, do no harm", Headsup: The Blog (2011-12-13)

 * But, and this is I think something Marx did not sufficiently appreciate, human beings confront all the structures which emerge from our massed interactions in this way. A bureaucracy, or even a thoroughly democratic polity of which one is a citizen, can feel, can be, just as much of a cold monster as the market. We have no choice but to live among these alien powers which we create, and to try to direct them to human ends. It is beyond us, it is even beyond all of us, to find "a human measure, intelligible to all, chosen by all", which says how everyone should go. What we can do is try to find the specific ways in which these powers we have conjured up are hurting us, and use them to check each other, or deflect them into better paths.
 * Cosma Shalizi, "In Soviet Union, Optimization Problem Solves You", Three-Toed Sloth (2012-05-30)

 * In the 1960s there seemed to be only one vegetarian restaurant in London, and it was defiantly named "Cranks". Its astonishing salads were an absolute revelation to most of us, who'd supposed up to then that vegetarianism meant eating meat and two veg without the meat, and for whom "salad" was a couple of floppy lettuce leaves and a tomato.
 * Katy Jennison,

 * Opening access to knowledge and knowledge networks is a good things. In fact, I have often pointed out that the only educational reforms to ever succeed were ones of open access (Chinese imperial examinations, universal primary education, GI bill). But their successes were not educational but political. They opened up opportunities for engagement and discursive legitimacy for more people than had them before. There is no straightforward utilitarian link between access and success. The argument is and should be a moral one.
 * Dominik Lukes, Easily Distracted comment (2012-07-22), reacting to a blog post about the MOOC craze

 * There's a special place in purgatory reserved for scientists who make bold claims based on tiny effects of uncertain origin; and an extra-long sentence is imposed on those who also keep their data secret, publishing only hard-to-interpret summary statistics from statistical models. The flames that purify their scientific souls will rise from the lake of lava that eternally consumes the journalists who promote and further exaggerate their claims.
 * Mark Liberman, "Texting and language skills", Language Log (2012-08-02)

 * Most British publishers would have insisted on the hyphen before the great British punctuation shortage developed in the 1950s, though.
 * Mark Brader,

 * There is, thus, no worse hed imaginable in the history of the world in space than "Police investigate." That is what cops do. When four people are found dead in a house late on Tuesday, that's the sort of thing that gets my attention on Wednesday morning -- not the procedural fact that the people we pay to investigate stuff are investigating stuff. There's a reason that, back in April 1865, the New York Times wrote that "the President ... was shot by an assassin," rather than "Police investigated the shooting of the president."
 * Fred Vultee, "History's Worst Hed", Headsup: The Blog (2012-12-09)

 * I think you're particularly onto something here, because in both cases, a large portion (the majority?) don't believe that these things are anything other than artificial and institutional and the only question is what is decided to be normative. Empiricism is either irrelevant or only secondary — it's secondary in the sense of studying details about what happens under some given artificial structure. Or, perhaps, it's of use only as pragmatics, that once you decide on a structure, then studying what happens afterwards might give you insight into more effectively imposing that structure. The point is that neither language or economics is considered by many to be things that have characteristics that are independent of deliberate human invention. Coupled with the fact that everyone has language and everyone participates in economic transactions and structures, then most people believe that the nature of these things, and what should be normative about them, can be understood through little more than intuition and introspection. So in both cases, arguments about them often exist primarily within the normative realm and implicitly are just arguments about values, with different groups asserting the primacy of different values. Empirical fact is dismissed when it contradicts these values and utilized when it doesn't. And those who don't share the view of these things as arbitrary human artifacts are on the other side of an intellectual chasm from those who do.
 * Keith M. Ellis, Language Log comment (2013-03-21), writing about the perception of linguistics and economics in the popular press

 * The casuistry of parsing the distinction between moving tow trucks and Hondas at rest was window-dressing, allowing the Court to march along in its invisible textualist suit even when even a child can tell that the emperor has no text.
 * Rick Hills, "The inevitably phoney textualism of 'express' preemption doctrine", PrawfsBlawg (2013-05-14), writing about the United States Supreme Court decision Dan's City Used Cars (docket 12-52, decided 2013-05-13)

 * Premeditated details arrive, when you're writing, and my instinct is always to reach for the nearest weapon.
 * Hisham Matar, in an interview with Paul Kennedy at the Blue Metropolis Literary Festival, Montreal, broadcast on CBC Radio 1's Ideas (2013-05-14, 37:50)

 * I noticed that my problems occur when I try to dominate the text, when I try to ask it to be something, or to ask it to fit into some sort of structure, or when I ask it to compliment my ego, or all of these things. That's really where all my problems start from.  Where it's going very well, is where I have sort of surrendered to it, you know, where I am behind the text, and I am watching, like a dancer who's following another dancer, and just watching where it might go next.  All I want to be is I want to be as ready and as available as possible for it.  That seems to me all I really need to do.
 * Hisham Matar, ibid., at 42:00

 * I think of novelists that I really return to and admire, you can almost sense that the book is somehow ahead of them, just a little bit ahead of them, no? You could write from the front: you could pull the book; there are masters that do that, and you can admire the architecture of it.  […] I suppose what I look for as a reader is a writer who's risky, who's putting themselves in a position that's vulnerable, where the text knows a little bit more, is a bit ahead of them.  And so I aspire to write those books, and that's why I suppose I put myself in that position.
 * Hisham Matar, ibid., at 43:30

 * Sheffield was British so there isn't much sex in this and what there is is about as erotic as a tax form. Having read the treatment of sex by various British authors of this period, I believe the primary method of reproduction involved spores and the main source of sexual entertainment was guilt
 * James Nicoll,

 * Everywhere I see the mistake of ignoring that people have priorities in their lives besides merely surviving another day. Even in severe illness or frailty, people desire connections to others and to purposes of their own choosing.  I think we've been wrong— I think we've been rather limited about what we think our job is in building systems of care for human existence.  We think our job is to ensure health and survival, but really it is larger than that. It is to enable wellbeing, and wellbeing is ultimately about sustaining the reasons one wishes to be alive.
 * Atul Gawande, "The Idea of Wellbeing", BBC Reith Lecture, 2014-12-16, at 22:36

 * The ringing doesn't help, either; everybody with a hammer has a rhythm, but they're not the same and even with only three it's a lot like the evil opposite of music.
 * Graydon Saunders, A Succession of Bad Days (2015), ch. 8

 * Ecology doesn't work in reverse, you can't make dead things live. If you can't make dead things live, there's no going backward. So there's nothing to do but move forward, and pick the least awful forward you can get.
 * Graydon Saunders, ibid., ch. 18

 * "The consequences of defeat are permanent; the consequences of victory persist until the next defeat." Wake says this conversationally. "So with good; what you do that is good persists until the next evil. This is very simple, if you can reliably decide what is good. Good would be a struggle to create a series of victories as little broken as you might arrange." […] "You could do good, if you could judge all the consequences of what you might do. Yet the world is immense; a full understanding of consequence is direly difficult to obtain, even should you live for thousands of years to see how what you have done works on the world, and yet good remains a judgement."
 * Graydon Saunders, ibid., ch. 29

 * "Act to avoid constraining the future; if you can, act to remove constrain from the future. This is a thing you can do, are able to do, to do together." […] "Remember that the least constrained future anyone has yet managed prefers the rule of law to the whims of wizards."
 * Graydon Saunders, ibid., ch. 29

 * Which is true: the tomato plants don't desire anything; the tomato plants have chemically-mediated decentralized responses to their environment, and if a unicorn thinks they smell invigoratingly of bitter death, that thought's all in the unicorn.
 * Graydon Saunders, Safely You Deliver (2016), ch. 22

 * It's habitual to confuse what you're used to with what's possible, and to give that a name.
 * Graydon Saunders, ibid., ch. 24

 * "It is a surpassingly difficult problem to correctly select which subordinate to execute."
 * Graydon Saunders, ibid., ch, 31

 * Unicorn backrests aren't ever going to be a widespread preference, but I think there is much about them to recommend.
 * Graydon Saunders, ibid., ch, 58

 * "No borrowing trouble from the future, there'll be plenty delivered in due time."
 * Graydon Saunders, Under One Banner (2018), ch. 10

 * "Power's being able to harm someone and compel them to accept it. Do a thorough job and they'll devise reasons they deserved it. Do an exceptional job and they'll hurt themself for you. That's the Bad Old Days, everything settled by exercise of personal power and the flow of harm."
 * Graydon Saunders, ibid., ch. 16

 * Gear sees the whole thing as having three cases; circumstances one can certainly overcome, circumstances where one must do all one can in the knowledge it will not suffice, and circumstances where the best response is unknown and must be discovered.
 * Graydon Saunders, ibid., ch. 50

 * Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protectes but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect. There is nothing more or else to it, and there never has been, in any place or time.
 * Frank Wilhoit, comment 26 on the Crooked Timber post "The Travesty of Liberalism", 2018-03-22

 * My walking pace was a trouble to the graul. It led to our progress being steady only for myself. It is a strange feeling, to be passing down the road before an intermittent progress of rasping, as though one has become the harbinger of an infrequent advance of grist-mills in the old stone style. Still, we caused not delays in traffic, though our passage was not without startlement.
 * Graydon Saunders, A Mist of Grit and Splinters (2020), Theead 3

 * "The law must rest on material facts without exception, that is the Ur-law. Thereby, belief excuses you nothing and permits you nothing, nor may the Commonweal make law or regulation to judge belief nor prefer one belief to another. Thus the accumulation of precedent, that if belief compels you to unlawful deeds, you are tried for those deeds."
 * Graydon Saunders, ibid.

 * "Duty is that conduct which permits your future self benevolent self-regard. […] Awareness prevents that future self from startling your conscious knowledge. […] None avoid necessity. Let not our hearts be hard."
 * Graydon Saunders, ibid., Thread 6
 * a military new year's toast

 * The medical literature isn't all on a level with the Journal of Evidence-Based Haruspicy, but a surprisingly large part of it comes shocking close.
 * Cosma Shalizi, "Book to Read While the Algae Grow in Your Fur, June 2022", Three-Toed Sloth

title: User:121a0012


text:
User talk:Tedius Zanarukando

--Aphaia 04:42, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

title: User talk:Tedius Zanarukando


text:
User talk:Elwikipedista~enwikiquote

Hi,, welcome back to Wikiquote ;-) Here are some useful links:
 * Browse To browse the site.
 * Reference desk To ask some questions related to quotes.
 * Village pump To discuss with other editors.
 * Community Portal Other useful links.

Shortly be bold and enjoy!--Aphaia 04:42, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

Your account will be renamed
Hello,

The developer team at Wikimedia is making some changes to how accounts work, as part of our on-going efforts to provide new and better tools for our users like cross-wiki notifications. These changes will mean you have the same account name everywhere. This will let us give you new features that will help you edit and discuss better, and allow more flexible user permissions for tools. One of the side-effects of this is that user accounts will now have to be unique across all 900 Wikimedia wikis. See the announcement for more information.

Unfortunately, your account clashes with another account also called Elwikipedista. To make sure that both of you can use all Wikimedia projects in future, we have reserved the name Elwikipedista~enwikiquote that only you will have. If you like it, you don't have to do anything. If you do not like it, you can pick out a different name.

Your account will still work as before, and you will be credited for all your edits made so far, but you will have to use the new account name when you log in.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Yours, Keegan Peterzell Community Liaison, Wikimedia Foundation 23:22, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Renamed
 This account has been renamed as part of single-user login finalisation. If you own this account you can |log in using your previous username and password for more information. If you do not like this account's new name, you can choose your own using this form after logging in: . -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 05:47, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

title: User talk:Elwikipedista~enwikiquote


text:
User:Kenyon

See my Wikipedia page.

title: User:Kenyon


text:
User talk:121a0012

--Aphaia 07:59, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

Quotation marks

 * I intend to keep on using proper punctuation. Apostrophes and quotation marks are entirely different things.  121a0012 13:42, May 17, 2005 (UTC)

If you are the person who, through a IP user account, has made a number of contributions to various style articles on Wikipedia, then you know that the question of what characters to use for punctuation is much more complex than the simple idea of what a character is used for in any given language or dialect at any given moment in history. I will not repeat the arguments for and against current Wikiquote practice here.

Typographic issues for any MediaWiki project are decided by consensus, and policy is described in the relevant project's Manual of Style. This house style, a concept with which you may be familiar, is standard practice not just in the MediaWiki world, but in the overall publishing industry. Each publisher has its own guidelines on how to represent punctuation, from strict observance of an original source, to a standardized form determined by the editors of the publication, most of which differ on a number of points. (See the guides from Chicago University Press, NY Times, AP, Oxford University, Cambridge University, as well as broader references like Strunk & White, not to mention the undocumented practices of music and cinematic publishing houses, for many examples of different practices.)

If you wish to change existing policy, you should bring up the issue at Wikiquote talk:Manual of style. Otherwise, you will likely have such contrarian practices in your contributions changed from time to time, and you will cause headaches for the very small number of people who are trying to bring pages into conformance with official policy.

Wikiquote is still too small to enforce its style guidelines, so a conscientious objector can pretty much do as they wish. But we are trying to clean up such irregular practices to make WQ look more professional. You can be a valuable contributor to this effort by participating in Wikiquote maintenance discussions. — Jeff Q (talk) 14:17, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

 * I see you've taken my advice by bringing up a set of points on this issue at WQt:MoS. Might I suggest that you sign your posting? (You might want to sign each section, as that lengthy argument is likely to generate nested discussions.) One of the problems that keeps the overworked sysops busy is reminding new users to sign their talk page postings so they may be taken seriously. I'm sure it was just an oversight on your part. — Jeff Q (talk) 16:23, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

Thank you
for your setting of QotD votes! --Aphaia 06:06, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

 * Thanks for the work on the July and August Quote of the Day voting pages. I had intended to create at least one for July at least this weekend, but saw you had already done it. ~ Kalki 27 June 2005 04:25 (UTC)

QotD August 6th
I realized that the entry for the Eisenhower quote was late, and if anyone had objected to its use in the couple of hours before the deadline, I would have deferred on that account, because I do think the TCP quote is a good one; but I thought the 60th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb was clearly a more notable event to commemorate than the birthday of Jon Postel, if a significant enough quote could be found. I didn't think the Dr. Strangelove quote was appropriate. There are many times already I have deferred to the clearly indicated preferences, even though they were not mine; this was a last minute decision, and I agree there is room for debate and further refinement of the selection processes. ~ Kalki 04:33, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

 * I only had a few very rushed minutes to respond earlier to your comments, and missed some typos that I just fixed. I also have only a few minutes now, and had only a few minutes to make the final QotD selection for today— I simply made a snap judgment upon the matter. I had thought the Postel quote a good one, and still do, and would like to use it sooner than his next birthday, if possible. ~ Kalki 08:00, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

Welcome assistance
Thank you for your participation in welcoming new Wikiquotians! ~ Jeff Q (talk) 05:59, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Record-setting VfD nominations
Whoa, pardner! I appreciate your enthusiasm for cleaning up articles, but could you give us a bit of a breather on your record-setting set of VfD nominations? I'm very concerned that even the regular reviewers, let alone newer visitors, will have a hard time doing justice to 40 new entries in a single day. You might instead make a list of your finds, and we can sift through with the proposed speedy-deletion changes in mind, possibly to allow us to SD many of them in the near future. Just a suggestion, though. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 05:22, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

 * Sorry, it's just an avoidance exercise. I started looking at Special:Shortpages and found it more fun than what I was supposed to be doing this evening.  Time for me to go to bed, anyway, so I'll leave you in peace for the overnight hours at least.  121a0012 05:26, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

 * I'm quite familiar with that tactic myself. I'm currently using it to avoid some annoying paperwork by mass-converting the old VFD archive pages. Anyway, thanks for calling attention to this entire area of needed cleanup. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 05:30, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

By the way, the reason I mentioned the speedy-deletion changes is that the people who have been putting off this critical task, which will allow us to summarily delete much of what must currently go through VfD, are the same ones who spend much of their editing time on VfD. By adding a dozen or more articles a day to VfD, you are all but ensuring that the means to speed up deletions will be pushed farther and farther down the road. I hate to discourage your efforts, but this is kind of a case of bad timing, as I'm really hoping that we can address Speedy deletions/Draft shortly after I finish the preliminary repair of our deletion archive mechanism. If you are still doing your good work on Wikiquote out of task avoidance, perhaps I can talk you instead into looking over the draft policy and commenting on it at Wikiquote talk:Speedy deletions? ☺ ~ Jeff Q (talk) 01:38, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

I notice that you've added another 9 entries to VFD, which is getting really crowded now. I know that it's very nice to have something as an avoidance exercise (it's why I took up stub-sorting at Wikipedia a while page), but there are nearly 80 active votes on VFD now, which is a bit much. If you're looking for some other repetitive work to do here, you might consider working on stub sorting (talked about at Village pump, at least until the votes from your first round of nominations have closed, just to keep the page to a manageable size. Most of the pages have been around for a while, and another few weeks won't hurt things much. (With the nominations from new pages, on the other hand, quickly starting the VFD process might work to discourage people from creating similar pages in the future.) As with Jeff, I don't want to discourage you or to turn away your enthusiasm, but it's a bit overwhelming at the moment. —LrdChaos 14:17, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Sysop nomination
With your ever-increasing work on Wikiquote maintenance in addition to your article work, I would like to know if you would be interested in becoming a sysop here. I've found your actions and postings both useful and well thought out (even when I disagree with them). I realize you may still be somewhat "offwiki", but at your convenience, let me know if you'd like to be considered. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 13:05, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

 * Arrghh! 121a0012, you're gonna kill me with these mass VfD nominations! ☺ Meanwhile, have you had a chance to think about possibly becoming a WQ sysop? ~ Jeff Q (talk) 04:14, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Much appreciated
Thanks for the work you did in helping to revert the latest series of vandalisms. - InvisibleSun 01:48, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Deletion of The Homework Diary Company Ltd
I noticed that you are supporting the deletion of the above article, and of a few affiliated articles. I have given some information on the deletion page, and, after seeing your user page, thought that you might be interested in a project to try and find sources for these quotes. Please see the deletion page for more information. Also, please read this notice which I placed at the reference desk. -- R160K 19:40, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Ralph Klein
''I'm a bit puzzled as to why you not only restored the copyvio text in this article, but restored a badly-formatted version thereof instead of going back to my last version (before I discovered the copyvio). 121a0012 18:09, 11 November 2006 (UTC)''

 * I was confused about this myself until I analyzed the edit activity involved. To make a long story short, I improperly edited new User:Trapper's version of the article to add a people-cleanup tag, when I should have noticed that the article had been updated several times since then with your logical changes.

 * This error has demonstrated a major flaw in my new-user welcome-and-review patrol. When I post welcomes, I often check user contributions to see if I can tweak or comment on edits to help set newbies on the right track early. Until recently, I always seemed to be the only frequent editor editing during the times that I do this work, so the new-user edits have been the latest versions. I've seen changes and avoided this mistake in the past, but clearly my old assumptions and level of attention are no longer adequate.

 * I apologize for the confusion. I'll try to be more careful in the future. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 21:14, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Danish politicians
''I just noticed that you never added vfd calls to the pages for the other Danish politicians when you added them to the VFD I started on Morten Messerschmidt. 121a0012 05:07, 17 November 2006 (UTC)''

 * Sheesh! Even cutting back on my activity, I'm still messing up basic stuff! I've tagged them all now and extended the vote again so all the articles can get a proper 7-day hearing. Thanks for catching this, 121a0012. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 09:18, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Esperanza
Join Esperanza and help make wikiquote a better place.

Pedro J. Ramírez
Hi, 121a0012.

The quote is verifiable and notable.

Verifiability:

Please hear, first fifth of the radio program: 5´35´´...[]....7´42´´...[]...10´54´´.

Notability

 * Pedro J. Ramírez is the CEO and founder of the second spanish newspaper ("El Mundo").

 * He is saying that the current spanish government version about what happened in the 2004 Madrid train bombings is impossible. It´s difficult to think about something more "notable"

Please use my TalkPage

Thank you for your attention. Randroide 13:22, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Theme article sourcing
You mentioned in an edit summary to Investment that "Our guidelines for theme pages allow omitting the source if the author's page has it." I am unaware of this guideline. Can you tell me where you found it? I couldn't find it in the WQ:Templates pages. I've posted an argument at Talk:Investment that refutes this idea, and if it is somehow being propagated elsewhere, I'd like to raise this as a problem there. Thanks. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 09:06, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

 * A-ha! I see now where you got the idea about no source lines for theme pages. Guide to layout currently recommends the source-less format:
 * "This is a quote." ~ Quotee
 * I see that the current version of this policy was essentially written by MosheZadka in a major update a year ago, and was implemented by lack-of-objection rather than meaningful consensus, largely because it was a necessary and visible policy that had to reflect updated practices. Your sense of its implications seems to be in line with actual practice. I also see that Imjustmatthew attempted to call attention to some of the contradictions at Wikiquote talk:Guide to layout, but received no response from anyone, myself included, I'm sorry to say.

 * I think time has shown the "quote ~ quotee" format just encourages a lack of sources anywhere, as many editors don't bother to add quotes to a "quotee" article, but just slap stuff they find on the Internet into a theme article. Furthermore, Wikiquotians are quite careless about the punctuation, using tildes, hyphens, double-hyphens, en-dashes, em-dashes (the last two in both HTML entity and UTF-8 character forms), and even no punctuation at all, to separate the quotes from the quotee. The net result is quite sloppy visually as well as informationally.

 * I would be tempted to start a crusade for switching to a single mandatory-source-line system for all non-dialogue quotes, except that this is just one of many widespread problems that seem to raise their head each week here. I don't see myself working on this particular one unless and until I regain my energy for such challenges. Even if I or someone else does this, I don't know if anyone else will participate. We might end up with another lack-of-objection-based policy. Sometimes it's very hard not to be discouraged by the lack of general Wikiquote community participation. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 04:40, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

fr:Winston Churchill
(No trouble, my english is far from perfect but I live in Toronto, so I'm used to it :)

Thanks a lot for the tip about Hansard. I've just searched the University of Toronto catalogue, and it seems the law library has the volumes I need — so I'll just go there and look it up as soon as possible.

I will of course add the information to the english page. :-) Thanks again for your help, Manuel Menal 05:17, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
 * ASAP proved to be quite long since it meant an interlibrary loan, but I finally found the needed volumes and added the references to both quotes. I'll try to get some other references. Thanks, Manuel Menal 05:25, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

James Thurber
Hi there. Is there anything I need to do about the copyvio concern I raised, other than sit back and see what happens next? Should I look for an admin to review the article per your tagging? Thanks. Mavarin 09:49, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Philip Larkin
I don't understand why you changed (1) the format and (2) locality of the birth and death dates in the Wikiquote Philip Larkin article. For format, I had "August 9, 1922". You changed this to "1922-08-09". I've seen the date format I used in many places, and I thought it was an acceptable alternative. Is it? If so, why change it?

Also, I had put in Wikipedia links for the year parts of the date, which I thought was pretty standard (see Robert Frost, for example). You removed the Wikipedia part, so now it's just the year. Your comment says "Use internal links for dates", which I took to mean that you wanted the links to go to Wikiquote. But Wikiquote doesn't seem to have links for years. Or, at least, the way you changed it doesn't link to anything. Before, the Month-Day combos were linked to Wikiquote pages, and the Years were linked to Wikipedia pages. Now, the Month-Day combos are linked to the same Wikiquote pages, and the Years are linked to nothing. How is this an improvement? Thanks!

Eric Albert 06:29, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Cleanup tags
I know you tend to be rather zealous in applying various cleanup tags, many of which are clearly appropriate, but I just noticed the notice applied to quotes on the page for The Last Unicorn, all of which have citations by chapter. I definitely feel that this is over-zealous, that further precision is not, and should not be required, and that the tag should be removed. ~ Kalki 08:18, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I do not believe that chapter numbers are adequate for verifiability, but setting that aside, the article also fails to identify the specific edition of the book being quoted. 121a0012 17:30, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
 * The edition being quoted can be helpful, and sometimes necessary in the case of variants, but I don't see it as absolutely necessary when there are no quotations or variants in dispute. I believe that insisting that people always need to give page citations for specific editions, unless there is actually some clear reason to dispute a quotation, is excessive. It can be good to be thorough, but it can be needlessly inhibitive to many potential editors to insist that they give page and edition citations for everything that they contribute.
 * Though accuracy and reliable citations should certainly be our goals, and these can be helped by thorough citations, Wikipedia had already become the biggest encyclopedia in history when it began to be dominated by policies that are so anal retentive about insisting on thorough citations for nearly every statement that is made; we are still a relatively small project with much need to grow. Unless there is clear reason to dispute a statement, such as those with a very uncharacteristic or slanderous nature, I believe we should not scare off or alienate too many potential editors with quite so extreme an insistence on meticulous citations for every quote we use, at least until we are likewise the largest and most thorough collection of quotes available, with a far greater number of regular editors, and can afford to be far more involved in the need for parring down excess and eliminating dross than in gathering new material. ~ Kalki 18:19, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

As you both know, I'm pretty anal about sourcing myself. My take is that we need to encourage specificity in sourcing, but not so much that we scare off people who are trying to do it. I definitely prefer pages numbers and editions (with a total page count that allows verifiers with different editions to interpolate), but I'm not inclined to implicitly criticize sources with only chapter information by tagging them with fix citation.

(By the way, 121a0012, thanks for bringing over fr:WQ material for our use. I'm not sure how much we should drive for this, per Kalki's concerns, but I can easily see us needing their more deliberate efforts soon if we don't get a handle on copyvio issues.)

My current thinking is that it's unreasonable to expect verifiers to read an entire book, but skimming through a chapter is tolerable, at least until we get many more regular contributors so that we can demand more of the community. Of course, this won't stop me from turning chapters into more specific citations if I happen to have a copy of the book available. As far as editions go, I don't think we need specific editions unless we have pages, as (in general) we can expect chapter numbering to stay the same between editions. Similar partial specificity may be appropriate for collections of poems, short stories, etc., where the cited source is "chapter-sized", making it a minor additional hurdle to find the quote. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 03:18, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

The Children of Men

 * This article is about a book, but is inappropriately formatted as a film.

''This might have been more obvious had you used lit-cleanup instead of cleanup. I don't mean to rag on you (and UDScott), but having just gone through more than 200 articles to clean up the mess that was Category:Wikiquote cleanup (and is now Category:Uncategorized article cleanup), it's rather disheartening to see another editor start to fill it up again with material that clearly belongs in another place (particularly when it's the editor who originally created lit-cleanup in the first place). 121a0012 04:03, 18 January 2007 (UTC)''

 * Sorry about that, 121a0012. I should have remembered, or at least looked up, which one that was. I guess my thought processes are so befuddled at the moment that the confusion between film and book formatting for that article was all it took for me to "punt" with the unnecessarily broad tag. I rarely use lit-cleanup, so it didn't immediately come to mind. As far as having created it, I did so as part of my own minor expansion of genre tags back in September 2006, but you might be surprised how many of my 22000+ edits I completely forget about, nearly one-tenth of which I made in that month alone. ☺ Anyway, mea culpa. I'll try to be more careful and precise. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 09:29, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Cleanup
You wrote:
 * Please do not add cleanup to new pages when an appropriate category exists (e.g., game-cleanup for video games). Sorting through the jumble of Category:Uncategorized article cleanup was difficult enough the first time.  121a0012 03:47, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
 * No problem, I usually do -- I didn't realize there was a template for game cleanup. ~ UDScott 13:42, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for all your contributions
I just wanted to give you kudos for all the hard work you've been doing here lately. (One of these days, I'm going to have to learn about the Barnstar system of Wikipedia, so we can import it and award it to folks like you.) My graphicless Barnstar award is for your considerable, consistent, and conscientious work to improve many aspects of Wikiquote, its articles, and its policies and practices. In fact, I suspect that you are the most prolific editor we currently have that we haven't been able to cajole into becoming an administrator. Keep up the good work! ~ Jeff Q (talk) 10:21, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Cleanup of Robert Fisk
More than a year ago, you tagged the Robert Fisk article as requiring cleanup. The last few days, I tried to put the article in an adequate form. Can the tag now be removed? Greetings, --Meile 17:38, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

 * Thank you for your message! I'll try to continue working on the article in the next few days. --Meile 19:44, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

cite web
You mentioned in a recent edit summary, "now I remember why I don't like cite web all that much". Is that because it uses periods instead of commas? Are there other annoying aspects? I ask because I'm looking into updating and improving our citation templates, and I'll be asking folks for their opinions. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 03:46, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

VfD: Rumor in African American culture
Since you tagged Rumor in African American culture for cleanup, you may be interested in discussing Votes for deletion/Rumor in African American culture. ~ Ningauble 18:14, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Thank you
Thank you for your comment at Village Pump regarding Kalki's inappropriate image use. I think at this point he's reverted the images all back. I'm not sure what to do at this point in time. If you have any suggestions going forward, it'd be appreciated. -- Cirt (talk) 05:33, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your honest opinions and I hope that FULL consideration of ALL possible people will be increasingly considered here. I welcome honesty and frankness, even where I must strongly disagree with it and sincerely believe I must present counter arguments with as much vigor as I can muster. I hope that you will appreciate that as a proper quality of a human being. Blessings to you. ~ ♞☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 05:44, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

title: User talk:121a0012


text:
Talk:The Fog of War

In composing this page, I have deleted the quotes that previously made up the entirety of the quotes section. Technically, I perhaps should check to make sure that all of the quotes were included, albiet in a more detailed context, in this present incarnation of this page. I have not yet done so.

Also, I think that it is important that the philosophy behind the rather sprawling Errol Morris wikiquote pages that I have made is this: these works are incredibly complex meditations on the ways that human beings use language to represent and misrepresent themselves. Anything that does not allow Morris' subjects to really speak for themselves runs contrary to the entire point of the art. Therefore, the only worthwhile way to create a quote page is to retain, as far as possible, something of a complete representation of the speaker's words. I know that this makes the page long and less approachable, but it also makes the page worth something in the terms that Morris himself is working with.

This being said, I cannot say that I would welcome edits to this page that simply cut content out instead of adding more. Of course, so far these pages (the pages for Errol Morris' films) have show little activity from anyone other than me, so perhaps this plea is worthless. But, hopefully, eventually, they will be more widely read. --Clotten 09:13, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

title: Talk:The Fog of War