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.

Computer science education cannot make anybody an expert programmer any more than studying brushes and pigment can make somebody an expert painter. -- Eric Raymond

The opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference. -- Elie Wiesel

Thus, programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute. -- Alan J. Perlis

Any fool can make the simple complex, only a smart person can make the complex simple. -- unknown

Good artists copy. Great artists steal. -- Pablo Picasso

Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm. ~Winston Churchill

I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions. –Stephen Covey

I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well. ~Diane Ackerman

What’s the point of being alive if you don’t at least try to do something remarkable. ~Anonymous