What do Americans look for in a car? I've heard many answers when I've asked this question. The answers include excellent safety ratings, great gas mileage, handling, and cornering ability, among others. I don't believe any of these. That's because the first principle of the Culture Code is that the only effective way to understand what people truly mean is to ignore what they say. This is not to suggest that people intentionally lie or misrepresent themselves. What it means is that, when asked direct questions about their interests and preferences, people tend to give answers they believe the questioner wants to hear. Again, this is not because they intend to mislead. It is because people respond to these questions with their cortexes, the parts of their brains that control intelligence rather than emotion or instinct. They ponder a question, they process a question, and when they deliver an answer, it is the product of deliberation. They believe they are telling the truth. A lie detector would confirm this. In most cases, however, they aren't saying what they mean. -- The culture code.

We are the sum of our behaviours; excellence therefore is not an act but a habit. -- Aristotle.

It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration. -- Edsger Dijkstra

A designer knows he has arrived at perfection not when there is no longuer anything to add, but when there is no longuer anything to take away. -- Antoine de St Exupery.

You must always work not just within but below your means. If you can handle three elements, handle only two. If you can handle ten, then handle five. In that way the ones you do handle, you handle with more ease, more mastery and you create a feeling of strength in reserve. -- Pablo Picasso

In order to understand what another person is saying, you must assume that it is true and try to find out what it could be true of. -- George Miller

If you genuinely want something, don’t wait for it — teach yourself to be impatient. ~Gurbaksh Chahal

If you do what you always did, you will get what you always got. ~Anonymous

Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no help at all. ~Dale Carnegie

If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough. ~Albert Einstein