(Extracted from Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master’s Insights on China, the United States, and the World)
I do not take anything all that seriously. If I did, I would be quite a sick man. A number of foolish things will be said about you. If you take them all seriously, you will get quite demented.
Between being loved and feared, I have always believed Machiavelli was right. If nobody is afraid of me, I am meaningless. When I say something…I have to be taken very seriously…What the crowd thinks of me from time to time, I consider totally irrelevant…The whole ground can be against, but if I know this is right, I set out to do it, and I am quite sure, given time, as events unfold, I will win over the ground.