I would like to talk to you about this idea of motivation, of overcoming the pull of this destructive dead weight that we call inertia or lack of initiative. There might be many instruments of motivation, but I am just going to mention six here. First, however, I would like to give you an illustration of what I am going to try to say; and although this illustration actually comes from an evil source, the principle itself is still a good one.

In 1929, Adolf Hitler, a young army corporal, sat in his prison cell in Germany writing in his book, Mein Kampf, his plan to make Germany the greatest nation in the world. The fact that, starting out singlehanded, he almost upset the world indicated that he had something. How did he do it? The answer is in his book. In effect he said that the question of Germany regaining her power was not how to manufacture or distribute arms, but how to produce in people that will to win, that spirit of determination which produces a thousand different methods, each of which ends with arms. Wars are not won with tanks or guns or airplanes or oil, but with that spirit of determination inside of people. That is also how souls are saved, great universities are built, and great scholars and scientists come into being--by the overcoming of this inertia that tends to hold us down and keep us inactive.

Many people know what is right but just do not always follow through. Let me mention some of the means by which we might get ourselves in motion. Socrates said at one time that he who would move the world must first move himself. Here are six motivating factors--and you might have a lot of others, but I hope that some of you will remember these.

Motive factor number one: We motivate people, including ourselves, with ideas. There are multitudes of ideas in books and minds and situations. Victor Hugo once said that the most powerful influence in the world is an idea whose time has come, and an idea's time comes when we get a harness on it so that it can be made to do work for us. Where do we get ideas? I would like to suggest to you that the best ideas you will probably ever have in your life are those that you yourself think and for which you work out the details. But we do not need to limit our ideas to our own manufacture; we have a lot of wonderful sources of ideas--for example, the scriptures. I get a little chill up and down my backbone every time I think that I can open the holy scriptures and read the word of the Lord. I know from them what he would have me do. I can go back and relive the antemortal council in heaven; I can go ahead and prelive the celestial kingdom. In the 76th section of the Doctrine and Covenants I can find out who is going to be there and why, and I can do the same with all the other kingdoms, almost as though I were having a conversation with the Lord. What a thrilling opportunity!

Another source of ideas is found in the work of the great poets. Somebody has said that the poets stand next to the prophets in their ability to lift us up. One of my heroes many years ago used to be Grantland Rice, the great sportswriter who used to go around the country following the champions of sport. He tried to isolate those traits that made athletes champions, and then he wrote some seven hundred poems about them. One of them is entitled "Courage." He said:

I'd like to think that I can look at death
and smile and say,
All I have left now is my final breath;
take that away,

And you must either leave me dust, or dreams,
or in far flight,
The soul that wanders where the stardust streams
through endless night.

But I'd rather think that I can look at life
with this to say:
Send what you will of struggle or strife,
blue skies or gray,

I'll stand against the final charge of hate
by peak and pit,
And nothing in the steel-clad fist of fate
can make me quit.

He was no dropout--he was not about to get weary of some good course he was following.

Ernest Henley was a hopeless cripple when he wrote "Invictus" and said:

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance,
I have not winced nor cried aloud:
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this veil of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishment the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Just think of the great philosophies, the great ambitions, the great enthusiasms that we can get into our mind as we try to become a master of a few more ideas! We ought to memorize a lot more. We sometimes read so lightly that our brain skates over the surface and the ideas evaporate almost before they are acquired.