Mahathir Mohamad

Politician

1925-07-10

Quotes by Mahathir Mohamad

• Most Americans, I think, know very little about East Asia or Southeast Asia. American businesspeople who have been here, they are very knowledgeable about this area, but the average American? No.

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• The Chinese are welcome to invest in industries in Malaysia. But just as we would not welcome mass immigration of Indians or Pakistanis or Europeans or Africans into Malaysia, we have to adopt the same stance on Chinese immigration into Malaysia.

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• Free press is not absolute. In this country, we say clearly if you start stirring up racial hatred, then we will put a stop to it. We might even close down your paper, because these things can only lead to a lot of riots and bloodshed.

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• I believe that every leader has a right to implement his own policy. But when I see things that are done that are not right - abuse of power, wrong approaches, wrong strategies, making use of foreign consultants, including those discarded by other countries - I feel that I have to have my say.

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• Being a medical practitioner enables me to get in touch with people, understand their problems, feel sympathetic towards them, and the natural thing is to want to help them, and if you become a politician and if you are successful, you can help them even more.

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• If you want to be honest with yourself, you have to take criticism, even if you attract adverse comments from others.

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• A heretic can be tolerated. But a heresy cannot.

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• Airplanes don't just disappear - certainly not these days with all the powerful communication systems, radio and satellite tracking, and filmless cameras which operate almost indefinitely and possess huge storage capacities.

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• The thinning of the ozone layer is blamed on logging of tropical forests. The fact that the burning of fossil fuels and release of CFCs (chloro-fluoro-carbons) into the atmosphere occur largely in the rich countries are significantly ignored.

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• The Internet is undermining moral values.

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• I am saying that currency trading is unnecessary, unproductive, and immoral. It should be stopped. It should be made illegal.

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• In my years, I had the opportunity to observe peoples and countries. I see some countries doing well, others failing, and my analysis of things is that whether you fail or succeed is a function of your value system.

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• Why do I want to remove Najib? I should have thought the whole world would know. This man steals money. Not a few hundred dollars, not a few thousand dollars - he stole billions of dollars, and that has been verified by investigations here in Malaysia and the U.S.

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• Affirmative action is not something that the World Bank believes in or promotes.

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• I want to leave UMNO because it is no longer UMNO. It is a party dedicated to supporting Mr. Najib, to protecting Mr. Najib, to upholding whatever it is that he does, including some of the wrong things that he has done. I cannot be a member of such a party.

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