George Packer Quotes

Quotes about:

• 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

  45 Copy quote

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

  George Packer

  Class, Democracy, Inequality

  17 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  5 Copy quote

• 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.

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  4 Copy quote

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

  George Packer

  Thinking, Would Be, American History

  Source: www.npr.org

  5 Copy quote

• 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.

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  5 Copy quote

• It's a cliche that the Senate is broken, and like most cliches, it's true.

  George Packer

  Broken, Cliche, Senate

  "Transcript: George Packer on ‘The Empty Chamber’". Interview with Tom Casciato, www.pbs.org. October 29, 2010.

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• The Petraeus-Crocker testimony is the kind of short-lived event on which the Administration has relied to shore up support for the war: the 'Mission Accomplished' declaration, the deaths of Uday and Qusay Hussein, Saddam's capture, the transfer of sovereignty, the three rounds of voting, the Plan for Victory, the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Every new milestone, however illusory, allows the Administration to avoid thinking ahead, to the years when the mistakes of Iraq will continue to haunt the U.S.

  George Packer

  War, Mistake, Thinking

  "Planning for Defeat" by George Packer, www.newyorker.com. September 17, 2007.

  6 Copy quote

• This is why mustard gas is such a danger or any weapon of mass destruction is such a dangerous thing because it - it's victims become everyone in the end.

  George Packer

  Mass Destruction, Weapons, Victim

  Source: www.npr.org

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• Inequality provokes a generalized anger that finds targets where it can--immigrants, foreign countries, American elites, government in all forms--and it rewards demagogues while discrediting reformers.

  George Packer

  Country, Government, Class

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  4 Copy quote

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