A Quote by Lee Kuan Yew

The ultimate test of the value of a political system is whether it helps that society to establish conditions which improve the standard of living for the majority of its people.
To improve the standard of living for working folks, we have to raise the minimum wage and empower workers to fight for their interests in an economic and political system that's stacked against them.
In this constant battle which we call living, we try to set a code of conduct according to the society in which we are brought up, whether it be a Communist society or a so-called free society; we accept a standard of behaviour as part of our tradition as Hindus or Muslims or Christians or whatever we happen to be.
Confusion conditions activity, which conditions consciousness, which conditions embodied personality, which conditions sensory experiences, which conditions impact, which conditions mood, which conditions craving, which conditions clinging, which conditions becoming, which conditions birth, which conditions aging and death.
The system is not intended as a substitute for private savings, pension plans, and insurance protection. It is, rather, intended as the foundation upon which these other forms of protection can be soundly built. Thus, the individual's own work, his planning and his thrift will bring him a higher standard of living upon his retirement, or his family a higher standard of living in the event of his death, than would otherwise be the case. Hence the system both encourages thrift and self-reliance, and helps to prevent destitution in our national life.
Majorities are of two sorts: (1) communal majority and (2) political majority. A political majority is changeable in its class composition. A political majority grows. A communal majority is born. The admission to a political majority is open. The door to a communal majority is closed. The politics of political majority are free to all to make and unmake. The politics of communal majority are made by its own members born in it.
Every politician deep inside is authoritarian. If the person doesn't have ambition, that's not a politician. Society needs to put every ambitious, every effective politician into such a position that it helps - that this person helps improve society. That's why I'm always talking about need to change the system rather than should we go with Navalny or Gudkov or Yavlinsky or Khodorkovsky. We all have our ambitions. We're all ambitious people.
A leader is someone who helps improve the lives of other people or improve the system they live under.
It would seem, then, to be the part of political wisdom to found government on property; and to establish such distribution of property, by the laws which regulate its transmission and alienation, as to interest the great majority of society in the protection of the government.
A just wage for the worker is the ultimate test of whether any economic system is functioning justly.
We do not just strive for a society in which every person has the opportunity to reach their full potential (all parties lay claim to that); we want to build a society in which whatever talents people have, they are rewarded with a comfortable standard of living when they apply them.
Since education is not a means to living, but is identical with the operation of living a life which is fruitful and inherently significant, the only ultimate value which can be set up is just the process of living itself. And this is not an end to which studies and activities are subordinate means; it is the whole of which they are ingredients.
First of all, Indonesian people have to be educated and to know what they want and what their country is all about. The interests of the people have to be put first! The entire society has to work day and night in order to improve the lives of the majority. Basically, we need the opposite of what is Indonesia right now, which is: the majority-serving business interests of the local gangsters and their foreign handlers.
The primary role of the church is to reflect God's value system in society and to train people in that value system. It's not the government's responsibility, nor are they equipped to do that on the most local level where the need exists.
It is to a dramatist, which is to say, to an unfrocked psychoanalyst, stunning that that which has sustained the Left in my generation, its avatar, its prime issue, has been abortion. For, whether or not it is regarded as a woman's right, an unfortunate necessity, or murder, which is to say, irrespective of differing and legitimate political views, to enshrine it as the most important test of the Liberal, is, mythologically, an assertion to the ultimate right of a postreligious Paganism.
If you look at Indian society, it's a society made up of minorities. There's nobody who's not a minority, whether it's ethnicity, caste or religion. But the whole effort now is to confect a political constituency - an ethnic or a religious constituency that can coalesce into a political majority in order to deal with this model of representative democracy. That process has been a hundred years in the making in this part of the world.
If the legislation helps people improve their lives, then that's great because that's the ultimate goal of all of this.
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