The longer I live, the more I am certain that the great difference between the great and the insignificant, is energy – invincible determination–a purpose once fixed, and then death or victory.

Sir Thomas Bowell Buxton

There is enough for everybody’s need, but not enough for anybody’s greed.

Mahatma Gandhi

We have to encourage the future we want rather than trying to prevent the future we fear.

Bill Joy, Sun Microsystems

I never will forget a couple of years ago I had a fascinating conversation with the President of China, and we were discussing what our future would be and whether we wished to contain China. And I said, “I don’t wish to contain China.” I said, “The biggest security threat China presents the United States is that you will insist on getting rich the same way we did.” And he looked at me, and I could tell he had never thought of that. And I said, “You have to choose a different future, and we have to help. We have to support you. And that does not in any way let us off the hook. But it just means that we have to do this together.”

Bill Clinton, 1997

Give me a place to stand and with a lever I will move the whole world.

Archimedes

Electric power is everywhere present in unlimited quantities and can drive the world’s machinery without the need of coal, oil, gas, or any other of the common fuels.

Nicola Tesla

… I do not think there is the slightest chance of its [electricity] competing, in a general way, with gas. There are defects about the electric light which, unless some essential changes take place, must entirely prevent its application to ordinary lighting purposes.

Select Committee on Lighting by Electricity, British House of Commons, 1879

It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope; and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

Robert F Kennedy

The energy crisis is certainly one of the most complex subjects ever put before the media, and through them, to the American public. It encompasses international relations, economics, science, and that most unpredictable of groups, the consuming public.

Walker, H E: The other crisis – energy and the media: Vital Speeches of the Day: Vol 40 No 18

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain of success than to take a lead in the introduction of a new order of things, because innovation has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new.

Machiavelli, The Prince (c. 1515)