Energy

The real key word that triggers my rage is the word "energy". When people start talking about positive or negative types, for instance, negative energy — what are you talking about? What do you mean? Let's think about it, what does energy mean? Well, we know what it means, you know, energy from petrol when it's burned and moves a car and makes it move, it's like this. "This room has positive energy." Now, where the fuck is it going, then? It's not moving. It's covering up such woolly thinking, such pathetic nonsense.

If you take a bale of hay and tie it to the tail of a mule and then strike a match and set the bale of hay on fire, and if you then compare the energy expended shortly thereafter by the mule with the energy expended by yourself in the striking of the match, you will understand the concept of amplification.

Our decision about energy will test the character of the American people and the ability of the President and the Congress to govern this Nation. This difficult effort will be the "moral equivalent of war," except that we will be uniting our efforts to build and not to destroy.