Singaporeans generally feel more secure these days. One of our tasks is to remind them that this, a result of a continuing act of will and an appropriate sense of insecurity, is very helpful.
There can only be one government, and the president has certain roles and duties, which are to hold the second key on money and on people but not to go and check the government or tell the government what it is supposed to do.
China is a very big and complicated country; it's not easy to govern. But with courage and unity, China will certainly overcome all difficulties and continue to develop and move forward.
The emerging economies, many of them are concerned. They didn't want the money to slosh in. They are afraid when the money sloshes out, but the tapering has to take place, and we have to be able to manage it.
I think every administration has a settling-in process. And there's always an adjustment between what you can say during a campaign and what you find are the possibilities and the imperatives when you win the election and you enter the Oval Office.
China's influence is growing; it is natural that they want to integrate more, do more business with countries around them, and the Belt and Road is a constructive way in which they can do so.
Maybe Americans feel they don't need the rest of the world anymore, and they wish it would go away. We don't have that option.
For trade to grow, India must make a strategic decision that you want to encourage interdependence and more openness and more trade-based economy.
We want the U.S. to have constructive and stable relations with China. That makes it much easier for us. Then we don't have to choose sides.
My infrastructure must run brilliantly. My whole system must be different from what you can get anywhere else in Asia.
Whichever country we are talking to, we are concerned with economic cooperation, how to deepen our mutual dependence, how to find new areas of win-win.
You have to understand that Singapore is quite different from Mauritius.
We have to work towards free trade because otherwise we will miss out on many opportunities for cooperation, and relations amongst countries will become much more difficult.
If you don't have that Singapore core, you can top up the numbers, but you are no longer Singapore. It doesn't feel Singapore - it isn't Singapore - and we can issue everybody red passports, but where is the continuity?
There will always be frictions when you have a foreign worker population or immigrant population in the country, and we have to manage that, and that requires good behaviour and adjustment both on the part of the foreign workers and the immigrants as well as on the part of the Singaporeans.
There is always competition for influence, but there are also opportunities for cooperation.
It is never helpful to point at sticking points, but it is always helpful to encourage one's partners to take a more active and forward-looking approach.
It's never easy to be a small country next to a big neighbor.
If we did not have a sense of who we were, how we got here, why we want to achieve something - which, on the face of it, on the logic of it, is probably not worth trying - and prove that logic wrong, then you wouldn't succeed; then you would just evaporate.
Every time you make a rule, somebody will think of a way to operate around the rule.
I hope to develop our relationship with the Trump administration and with the United States. It's a very sound relationship that's based on the basic strategic congruence of views about the world, about the region.
The U.S. is not a claimant state in the South China Sea or in the China-Japan dispute over the Senkaku Islands. But, of course, the 7th Fleet has been a presence in the region since the Second World War, and it is the most powerful fleet in the region.
Singapore needs to be able to continue to add value to China in order for the relationship to be worthwhile for both sides.
We stand stoutly against all forms of terrorism, and cross-border terror is a particular problem that India has. Singapore has a problem with cross-border terror, too, because we are a very small country, and it is quite possible for an attack to be mounted on Singapore from beyond our shores.
With Singaporeans, you speak English, you're well-educated, the doors open everywhere.
We are all in favor of the U.S. taking an active and constructive interest in Asia.
If you look at the young people today, they are passionate about all kinds of courses. We have dog-lovers, nature-lovers, those who are pursuing arts; we have quite many who are involved in religious activities through their church.
I do not owe hundreds of millions of potential foreign workers from around the world an obligation. I owe Singaporeans a responsibility.
My colleagues went on the Internet, went on Facebook, and they found it helpful, and they persuaded me that I should try, so I did. It's quite fun provided you keep it in balance and... from time to time slip in a serious message.
You need people who have their own views, whose views you respect, whom you can have a productive disagreement with, and work out ideas which you might not have come up with, or who improve on ideas you had.
Singapore admires America's dynamism, vibrancy, and capacity for self-renewal. These qualities attract the best and brightest from around the world.
Countries in Asia - Singapore, certainly, but many other countries too - are good friends to both China and America, and we would like to be good friends with both.
China has been developing, growing in economic strength and its influence in the region. That will continue.
If you asked a Singaporean, on the one hand they'll say, 'Let us do our own things.' On the other hand, when an issue comes out, they'll ask, 'What is the government doing about it?'
Over half a century working together on multiple issues, Singaporeans and Americans have made many enduring and close personal friendships.
You have to have an idea of what you need to do, what needs to be fixed, what can be improved, what we should now imagine together which we didn't previously imagine. And having thought of it, decide to go it. And that's the government's role.
Basically, if you become president, you must swear to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution and what the Constitution says.
