National Day Message of Mr Lee Kuan Yew
"I am not here tonight to preach blood, sweat and tears or talk about the apocalypse.
You have done well, six superb years, a magnificent performance against all the odds, so much so that everybody says, 'But, of course, everybody knows that Singapore is a very well-endowed place, geographically favoured by the gods, good infrastructure, communications, sea, air, land, good banking system, skilled workers.
Oh, just natural course of events.' It wasn't, you know. We made it so.
And if a lot of the stupid things I read in the newspaper, if the people who wrote those stupid things were listened to, you wouldn't be here, I wouldn't be here, we wouldn't have this occasion.
You wouldn't have flowers, you know, every potted plant means effort, organisation, somebody with green fingers, fertilisers. It could have so very easily been otherwise."
Tough love was needed to maintain an upward trajectory.
That was the gist of his message in 1971.
When heavy rain poured in 1968, Mr Lee Kuan Yew decided that the parade would go because to do otherwise would have implied that Singaporeans were not resilient.
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