"Computers are scary. They're nightmares to fix, lose our stuff, and, on occasion, they crash, producing the blue screen of death. Steve Jobs knew this. He knew that computers were bulky and hernia-inducing and Darth Vader black. He understood the value of declarative design."

Failure

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Thematic Reflection

This quotation examines the core nature of Failure as articulated by Wesley Morris. Within historical and literary traditions, reflections on Failure provide actionable mental models, challenging individuals to evaluate personal ethics, self-discipline, and daily actions.

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About Wesley Morris

Wesley Morris is an American film critic and podcast host. He is currently critic at large for The New York Times and host of the New York Times podcast Cannonball. He was formerly co-host, with J Wortham, of the New York Times podcast Still Processing. Previously, Morris wrote for The Boston Globe, then Grantland. He won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism for his work with The Globe and the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism for his New York Times coverage of race relations in the United States, making Morris the only writer to have won the Criticism prize more than once.

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More by Wesley Morris

"In movies, there are some things the French do that Americans are increasingly incapable of doing. One is honoring the complexities of youth. It's a quiet, difficult undertaking, requiring subtlety in a filmmaker and perception and patience from us."

— Wesley Morris
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"Standing beneath the white light of an Apple store is like standing on a Stanley Kubrick movie set. His '2001: A Space Odyssey' predicted Jobs and a future where technology was our friend. Kubrick, of course, didn't like what he saw. And occasionally, I have my doubts."

— Wesley Morris
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"There comes a point in your moviegoing life where you look at the screen and then you look at the world and you ask, 'What is going on?' You want the movies to show you the chaos and mess and risk and failure that are normal for a lot of us. Generally, the movies hide all of that."

— Wesley Morris
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"Sidney Poitier became a star in part by helping black and white Americans negotiate their new relationship in the post-Civil Rights era."

— Wesley Morris
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More about Failure

"Everybody keeps saying that India's a poor country. Yes, we have poverty. But I blame the government of India, the political establishment, for their failure to educate and therefore their failure to control the poverty."

— Vijay Mallya
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"You don't have to be a brain surgeon to be a valuable person. You become valuable because of the knowledge that you have. And that doesn't mean you won't fail sometimes. The important thing is to keep trying."

— Benjamin Carson
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"Failure is instructive. The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as from his successes."

— John Dewey
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"The pursuit of excellence requires knowing that every failure is just a stepping stone to greatness."

— Nina Berberova
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