“Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall” – Confucius

Confucius was an ancient Chinese philosopher famous for his teachings on ethics, good behaviour and moral character. Mr. Lee Kuan Yew, whom we deeply respect, used the Confucian values for Singapore’s nation-building process in the 1980s. Even though Singapore is a multicultural society, it had a large Chinese majority and therefore this worked well. Confucian values such as thrift, hard work, filial piety and scholarship and learning were promoted via schools, mass media and government policies. I grew up in this cultural landscape and therefore am quite familiar with Confucius. Here is his statue in a high school in a small Henan town.

For more information:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucius
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucianism
• https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Confucius