Become impossible to squeeze

In one of his famous speeches, he compared Singapore with the fruit durian. He said that if Singapore was like an orange, the juice would already have been squeezed by the other more powerful players on the world stage. But instead even when it is small in size, it is more like a durian - highly nutritious, but hard to squeeze. If you attempt to squeeze it, your hands will get hurt.

Don't hope that people won't squeeze you, instead become hard to squeeze.