This article describes the motivation for imaging nearby luminous quasars in order to discover what ``turns on'' a quasar and produces their enormous energy output. The observational program described here has now been completed and fully analyzed; the results are presented in the paper ``Hubble Space Telescope Images of a Sample of Twenty Nearby Luminous Quasars,''ApJ, 479, 642-658 (April 20, 1997) [also available from my home page under Recent Preprints and Reprints].