(Extracted from Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master’s Insights on China, the United States, and the World)
My upbringing in a three-generation family made me an unconscious Confucianist. It seeps into you, the Confucianist belief that society works best where every man aims to be a gentleman. The ideal is a junzi , a gentleman…That means he does not do evil, he tries to do good, he is loyal to his father and mother, faithful to his wife, brings up his children well, treats his friends properly, and he is a good, loyal citizen of his emperor… The underlying philosophy is that for a society to work well, you must have the interests of the mass of the people, that society takes priority over the interests of the individual. This is the primary difference with the American principle, the primary rights of the individual.