"The Fountainhead" by Ayn Rand

These are some quotes which I find worth remembering.

• “Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artists metaphysical value judgments.”

• “Integrity is the ability to stand by an idea.”

• “Self-sacrifice? But it is precisely the self that cannot and must not be sacrificed.” 

• “Don't think. Believe. Trust your heart, not your brain. Don't think. Feel. Believe.” 

• “Every loneliness is a pinnacle” 

• “A quest for self-respect is proof of its lack”

•  “Never ask people. Not about your work. Don't you know what you want? How can you stand it, not to know?”

• “Ask anything of men. Ask them to achieve wealth, fame, love, brutality, murder, self-sacrifice. But don’t ask them to achieve self-respect. They will hate your soul.” 

• Freedom. . .To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing.”  

• The mind is the attribute of man. When man is born, he comes into existence with only one weapon with him- The reasoning mind.

• The mind is the attribute of man. When man is born, he comes into existence with only one weapon with him- The reasoning mind.

• I inherit nothing. I stand at the end of no tradition. I may, perhaps, stand at the beginning of one.

• Anything may be betrayed, anyone may be forgiven. But not those who lack the courage of their own greatness.

• I have come here to say that I do not recognize anyone's right to one minute of my life.... It had to be said. The world is perishing from an orgy of self-sacrificing.

• I am a man who does not exist for others.

• Show me your achievement - and the knowledge will give me courage for mine.

• Worry is a waste of emotional reserve.

• Only by accepting total compulsion can we achieve total freedom.

  

Time Travel

"How to build a time machine" by Paul Davies

Some tricky questions. Where exactly are the past and future? Surely the past has disappeared and cannot be retrieved, while the future hasn't yet come into being. How can a person go to a world that doesn't exist.
Sir Issac Newton took a more abstract and mechanistic view of time. "Absolute, true and mechanical time, flowing equably without relation to anything external".
Einstein's work demolished Newton's view of both space and time, rendered meaningless the universal division of time into past, present and future, and paved the way for time travel.

1.How to visit the future.

 "Time is not absolutely defined", Albert Einstein

Einstein gave the concept of relative time. Time is elastic. According to special theory of relativity, the exact duration of time between two specific events will depend on how the observer is moving.

Experiment: Joe Hafale and Richard Keating 1971. They put highly accurate atomic clocks into airplanes, flew them around the world, and compared their readings with identical clocks left on the ground. The results were unmistakable: time ran more slowly in the airplane than in the laboratory, so that when the experiment was over the airborne clocks were fifty-nine nanoseconds slow relative to the grounded clocks-exactly the amount predicted in Einstein's theory.

Physicists call the slowing of time by motion the time dilation effect.
Einstein's time dilation factor


At half the speed of light, time is about 13 % slowed, at 99%, it is 7 times slower-1 minute is reduced to 8.5 seconds. Technically, the timewraps becomes infinite when the speed of light is reached. This is a sign of trouble. It tells us that a normal material body can't reach the speed of light.

"Atlas Shrugged"--by Ayn rand

v The Duty of thinkers is not to explain, but to demonstrate that nothing can be explained.

v The purpose of philosophy is not to seek knowledge, but to prove that knowledge is impossible to man.

v Happiness is a delusion of those whose emotions are superficial.

v “Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your  premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.”

v  “If you tell a beautiful woman that she is beautiful, what have you given her? It's no more than a fact and it has cost you nothing. But if you tell an ugly woman that she is beautiful, you offer her the great homage of corrupting the concept of beauty. To love a woman for her virtues is meaningless. She's earned it, it's a payment, not a gift. But to love her for her vices is a real gift, unearned and undeserved. To love her for her vices is to defile all virtue for her sake - and that is a real tribute of love, because you sacrifice your conscience, your reason, your integrity and your invaluable self-esteem.”

v “If one's actions are honest, one does not need the predated confidence of others.”

v “Don't think of them now. Never think of pain or danger or enemies a moment longer than is necessary to fight them. You're here. It's our time and our life, not theirs. Don't struggle not to be happy. You are."

v I am, therefore I'll think”

v “Happiness is a state of non-contradictory joy--a joy without penalty or guilt, a joy that does not clash with any of your values and does not work for your own destruction, not the joy of escaping from your mind, but of using your mind's fullest power, not the joy of faking reality, but of achieving values that are real, not the joy of a drunkard, but of a producer.”

v “There are no evil thoughts except one; the refusal to think.”

v “Any work is creative work if done by a thinking mind.”

v “He never felt lonliness except when he was happy.”

v In this world, either you're virtuous or you enjoy yourself. Not both...Not both.”

v “Rationality is the recognition of the fact that nothing can alter the truth and nothing can take precedence over that act of perceiving it.”

v “ Never think of pain or danger or enemies a moment longer than is necessary to fight them.”

v “There is no necessity for pain-why, then, is the worst pain reserved for those who will not accept its necessity?”

v “The sight of an achievement was the greatest gift a human being could offer to others.”

v “I think it's a sin to sit down and let your life go without making a try for it.”

v “Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it”

v “Man has the power to act as his own destroyer and that is he has acted through most of history.”

v “Sacrifice is the surrender of that which you value in favor of which you dont”

v “To me there's only one form of human depravity-the man without a purpose.”

v “Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent.” 

100 ways to simplify your life-Book summary

100 ways to simplify your life

By Joyce Meyer

1. Do one thing at a time.
"The feeling of being hurried is not usually the result of living a full life and having no time. It is, contrary, born of a vague fear that we are wasting our life. When we do not do the one thing we ought to do, we have no time for anything else-we are the busiest people in the world."....Eric Hoffer

2. Be Satisfied with what you have.
"Contentment is not the fulfillment of what you want, but the realization of how much you already have."

3. Let go of what lies behind.
"You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don't try to forget the mistakes, but you don'e dwell on it. You don't let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space.".........Johnny Cash

4. Learn how to say NO.
"The art of leadership is saying no, not saying yes.It is very easy to say yes."....Tony Blair

5. Be yourself
"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment."...............Ralph Waldo emerson

6. Refuse to start what you cannot finish
"We rate ability in men by what they finish, not by what they attempt."

7. Stop procrastination
"Procrastination is opportunity's natural assassin."..........Victor Kiam

8. Let the main thing be the main thing.

9. Know yourself
"Know yourself. Don't accept your dog's admiration as conclusive evidence that you are wonderful."...Ann Landers

10. Define personal priorities
"Set priorities for your goals. A major part of successful living lies in the ability to put first things first. Indeed, the reason most major goals are not achieved is that we spend our time doing second things first."...Robert J. Mckain

11. Be Quick to forgive.
"Forgiveness doesn't make other person right, it makes you free."....Stormie Omartian

12. Mind your own business.

13. Don't be judgemental

14. Be Decisive

15.Think before you speak.

16. Refuse to live in fear.

17. Follow your heart.

18. Don't be afraid of what people think
"A man's reputation is what other people think of him; his character is what he really is.".....John Milton

19. Stop doing things you don't do well.
"Do what you are good at and everything else will fall into place.".....Willnett Crockett

20. Have simple friends.

21. Be Thankful.

22. Count the cost before you promise.
"He who is most slow in making a promise is the most faithful in performance of it.".....J.J.Rousseau

23. Take control of your thoughts.
"Drag your thoughts away from troubles...by the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it.".....Mark Twain

24. Plan Ahead.

25. Organize.

26. Buy some time.

27. Give up control

28. Tackle each day as it comes.

29. Keep your conscience clear.

30. Don't be easily offended

31. It is never too late to begin again.

32. Let Discipline be your friend.

Ideas that motivate me-Part-II

Ideas that motivate me-Part-II

• Live the life you want to live. Be the person you want to remember. Make decisions, make mistakes. If you fall, atleast You tried.

• Life is not about finding yourself. Its about creating yourself.

• Its not who you are holds you back. Its who you think you are not.

• Dont cry because its over. Smile because it happened.

• Life is not a matter of milestones, but of moments

• Experience is what you get when you don't stop trying.

• "Freedom isn't worth having if it doesn't include the freedom to make mistakes.

• "There are no facts, only interpretations." 

• "A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it." 

• "To know what you know and to know what you don't know, that is real wisdom."

• "Be silent or let thy words be worth more than silence."

Ideas that motivate me-Part -I

Ideas that motivate me-Part -I

• "The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas."~ Linus Pauling

• "The great thing in this world is not so much where you are but in what direction you are moving."~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

• "Persistent people begin their success where others end in failure."~ Edward Eggleston

• To really lead is to "judge each day not by the harvest you reap but by the seeds you plant."- Robert Louis Stevenson

• "When staring at death, I asked: "Why did I waste so much energy on things that didn't matter?"-Ric Elias

• "If anything terrifies me, I must try to conquer it." - Francis Chichester

• "The great use of life is to spend it doing something that will outlast it."- William James

• Learn how to be happy with what you have while you pursue all that you want.

• We never enjoy perfect happiness; our most fortunate successes are mingled with sadness; some anxieties always perplex the reality of our satisfaction.

• “Your time is limited, don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living the result of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinion drown your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition, they somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” – Steve Jobs

• Do not fear going forward slowly; fear only to stand still

• Study as if you were to live forever. Live as if you were to die tomorrow

• My goal is to be accused of being strident.

• It isn't where you come from, it's where you're going that counts.

• Obstacles are those things you see when you take your eyes off the goal.

• One of the most beautiful gifts in the world is the gift of encouragement. When someone encourages you, that person helps you over a threshold you might otherwise never have crossed on your own.

• To reach a great height a person needs to have great depth.

•  Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall."Confucius"

• Success is not measured by what you accomplish but by the opposition you have encountered, and the courage with which you have maintained the struggle against overwhelming odds. ..Orison Swett Marden

• Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.

• Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense. - Ralph Waldo Emerson