George Packer Quotes

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Ideology knows the answer before the question has been asked. Principles are something different: a set of values that have to be adapted to circumstances but not compromised away.

George Packer

Principles, Different, Answers

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Inequality hardens society into a class system. Inequality divides us from one another... Inequality undermines democracy.

George Packer

Class, Democracy, Inequality

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We will have a more just society as soon as we want one.

George Packer

Want

George Packer (2015). “Blood of the Liberals”, p.402, Macmillan

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When Donald Trump yells at his supporters to throw somebody out of the hall - and usually that somebody is brown or black or often is - that means he's galvanizing a kind of mob spirit, which is also a racial mob spirit.

George Packer

Mean, Often Is, Black

Source: www.npr.org

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At the heart of the matter is a battle between wish and fear. Fear generally proves stronger than a wish, but it leaves a taste of disappointment on the tongue.

George Packer

Disappointment, Fear, Heart

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We have all the information in the universe at our fingertips, while our most basic problems go unsolved year after year...All around, we see dazzling technological change, but no progress.

George Packer

Years, Technological Change, Progress

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It seems preposterous now, but Amazon began as a bookstore.

George Packer

Amazon, Bookstores, Seems

"Cheap Words" by George Packer, www.newyorker.com. February 17 & 24, 2014.

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The way Donald Trump talks about the problems of black Americans as a kind of separate group who are not part of his audience but he's kind of reaching over his audience or behind his audience to black Americans, saying what have you got to lose? As in you might as well join me because the Democrats haven't done anything for you. But joining me means joining this group that already supports me.

George Packer

Mean, Support, Black

Source: www.npr.org

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Before the nineteen-seventies, most Republicans in Washington accepted the institutions of the welfare state, and most Democrats agreed with the logic of the Cold War. Despite the passions over various issues, government functioned pretty well. Legislators routinely crossed party lines when they voted, and when they drank; filibusters in the Senate were reserved for the biggest bills; think tanks produced independent research, not partisan talking points. The "D." or "R." after a politician's name did not tell you what he thought about everything, or everything you thought about him.

George Packer

War, Party, Independent

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Inequality saps the will to conceive of ambitious solutions to large collective problems, because those problems no longer seem very collective.

George Packer

Class, Ambitious, Sap

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Character is destiny, and politicians usually get the scandals they deserve, with a sense of inevitability about them.

George Packer

Character, Destiny, Scandal

"The Trouble with Christie" by George Packer, www.newyorker.com. January 13, 2014.

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In a sense, whites who were always sort of the unthinking majority who didn't think of themselves necessarily as one among many interest groups but is simply the dominant group, now as whites become - are close to becoming a minority of Americans, are becoming a political interest group. And that's what Donald Trump is playing to. And it's a really dangerous, volatile game.

George Packer

Thinking, Games, Political

Source: www.npr.org

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Twitter is crack for media addicts.

George Packer

Media, Cracks, Addict

"Stop the World" by George Packer, www.newyorker.com. January 29, 2010.

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The invisibility of work and workers in the digital age is as consequential as the rise of the assembly line and, later, the service economy.

George Packer

Age, Lines, Invisibility

"Where Have All the Workers Gone?" by George Packer, www.newyorker.com. February 24, 2014.

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Surrendering to jargon is a sign of journalism's dismal lack of self-confidence in the optimized age of content-management systems.

George Packer

Self Confidence, Age, Jargon

"Telling Stories About the Future of Journalism" by George Packer, www.newyorker.com. January 27, 2014.

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I do think Donald Trump would be a catastrophic turn in American history.

George Packer

Thinking, Would Be, American History

Source: www.npr.org

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I would caution anyone who thinks the solution is to get out to realize that Iraq will be our problem, whether we're there or not, for years to come. It will not be Vietnam; it will not let us go home and lick our wounds.

George Packer

Home, Thinking, Years

"An author's confession -- he got the war wrong / George Packer supported Iraq invasion, but now fears spiraling civil conflict". Interview with Steven Winn, www.sfgate.com. December 4, 2005.

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Putin stands for the opposite of a universal ideology; he has become an arch-nationalist of a pre-Cold War type, making mystic appeals to motherland and religion.

George Packer

War, Opposites, Arches

"Terms of Crisis" by George Packer, www.newyorker.com. March 31, 2014.

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Today, we have our own concentrations of economic power. Instead of Standard Oil, U.S. Steel, the Union Pacific Railroad, and J. P. Morgan and Company, we have Amazon, Google, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft.

George Packer

Oil, Apples, Google

"Where Have All the Workers Gone?" by George Packer, www.newyorker.com. February 24, 2014.

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It's kind of funny to read the work of ex-Marines and soldiers because what they said to me as a reporter was only a fraction of what they were thinking and feeling and saying to one another.

George Packer

Marine, Thinking, Feelings

Source: www.bostonglobe.com

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Gingrich was a far more volatile and aggressive individual than Boehner, but the institutional norms of self-restraint, and perhaps even self-interest, have broken down under the pressure of an increasingly abnormal Republican Party.

George Packer

Party, Self, Broken

"Darkness in Washington" by George Packer, www.newyorker.com. October 3, 2013.

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With work increasingly invisible, it's much harder to grasp the human effects, the social contours, of the Internet economy.

George Packer

Internet, Invisible, Economy

"Where Have All the Workers Gone?" by George Packer, www.newyorker.com. February 24, 2014.

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Amazon's identity and goals are never clear and always fluid, which makes the company destabilizing and intimidating.

George Packer

Goal, Identity, Amazon

"Amazon's Bold Plan to Start a Last-Place TV Network" by Marcus Wohlsen, www.wired.com. March 28, 2014.

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Like an odorless gas, [inequality] pervades every corner of the United States and saps the strength of the country's democracy. But it seems impossible to find the source and shut it off.

George Packer

Country, Democracy, United States

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Much of the international unease with the Sochi Games has focused on the threat of terrorism, Putin's domestic repressiveness, and the Russian campaign of anti-gay propaganda.

George Packer

Gay, Games, Campaigns

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Latest quotes from interviews

"We've just been sort of spinning our wheels for such a long time, for decades really, with each new president being considered illegitimate by the other side. That's been the case ever since Bill Clinton. And it's a - you can't keep frittering away your political capital that way and expect there not to be some long-term rot that sets in."

- George Packer,

www.npr.org, added Nov 18, 2016

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George Packer

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Born: August 13, 1960
Occupation: Journalist
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