"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.”