“The motive power is the cause of all life.”

Source: The Quiet American

Source: The Power of Myth (book), p. 28
Context: Now, what is a myth? The dictionary definition of a myth would be stories about gods. So then you have to ask the next question: What is a god? A god is a personification of a motivating power or a value system that functions in human life and in the universe - the powers if your own body and of nature.

To The Central Advisory Council of Industries, New Delhi, January 3, 1969.
Keynote: Excerpts from his speeches and chairman's statements to shareholders

p, 125
Reflections on the Motive Power of Heat (1824)

Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (2016), Chapter 7, “Failure Is the Way Forward” (p. 160)

Brooklyn Eagle (10 July 1931)

Fooled by Randomness (2001)

Source: &quot; The Poet of Pessimism https://www.henrysalt.co.uk/library/essay/the-poet-of-pessimism/&quot;, Vegetarian Review, August 1896 <br class="br">Context: We work for an ideal, not because we believe the ideal is destined to be triumphant, but because we are impelled so to work, and cannot, without violence to our best instincts, act otherwise. We protest against cruelty and injustice for the same reason, not merely because we feel that the dawn of a better day is at hand, but because such a protest has to be made, and we know intuitively that we must help to make it. Of the event we can have no absolute assurance—it rests for other minds and other hands than our—but we can at least be assured that we have done what was natural and inevitable to us, and that, whether successful or unsuccessful, there was no other course for a thoughtful man to take.