George Packer Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• Since I was a kid. I had this series by Ballantine Books about the history of World Wars I and II. In my 20s, it was the Vietnam War literature of novelists like Tim O'Brien, Philip Caputo, and Tobias Wolff, and then nonfiction such as "A Bright Shining Lie" by Neil Sheehan and "The Best and Brightest" by David Halberstam . Those are the two best histories of Vietnam.

  George Packer

  Lying, War, Book

  Source: www.bostonglobe.com

  4 Copy quote

• I think it's important for Americans to try to understand each other a little better.

  George Packer

  Thinking, Important, Trying

  "The 'Dangerous, Volatile Game' Trump Plays With The White Working Class". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. November 3, 2016.

  4 Copy quote

• A genuine approach to budget cutting - knowing exactly what you're cutting and why, and with what real-life consequences - is beyond my competence, and probably beyond the competence of any politician in America.

  George Packer

  Real, Cutting, Knowing

  "Ask the Author Live: George Packer on Obama and the Budget". The New Yorker Live Chat, www.newyorker.com. April 15, 2011.

  4 Copy quote

• One book that I heard was circulating the Green Zone was "Bureaucracy Does Its Thing" by Robert Komer , who worked for President [Lindon] Johnson in Saigon. This book is about the inevitably of screwing up when a country takes on a war with so little understanding of the country they are fighting.

  George Packer

  Country, War, Book

  Source: www.bostonglobe.com

  4 Copy quote

• When I interviewed Paul Bremer in his office he had almost no books on his shelves. He had a couple of management books, like "Leadership" by Rudolph Giuliani . I didn't take it as an encouraging sign.

  George Packer

  Couple, Book, Office

  Source: www.bostonglobe.com

  4 Copy quote

• I don't know if it's a male thing, but I've always been interested in how people respond to the stresses and dangers of war, how they react under fire. In the extremity of war, character is revealed.

  George Packer

  Stress, War, Character

  Source: www.bostonglobe.com

  4 Copy quote

• American politics can produce great men and women, but it is profoundly insular.

  George Packer

  Men, Produce, American Politics

  "Ask the Author Live: George Packer". The New Yorker Live Chat, www.newyorker.com. June 18, 2010.

  4 Copy quote

• You don`t have to be foreign policy expert to succeed as president, but you have to have ice water for blood.

  George Packer

  Ice Water, Blood, President

  4 Copy quote

• People in Congress are willing to shut down the entire government or to make it impossible for a Supreme Court nominee to get a hearing or for routine appointments in the executive branch to go unfilled for years because of a hold placed by a senator.

  George Packer

  Government, Years, People

  Source: www.npr.org

  4 Copy quote

• I'm reading a bunch of fiction by Afghan and Iraq War veterans for a New Yorker piece. There hasn't been that much, but it's starting to come out, and some of the fiction is really good.

  George Packer

  War, Reading, Iraq

  Source: www.bostonglobe.com

  4 Copy quote

• I am reading "The Yellow Birds" by Kevin Powers and "Redeployment" by Phil Klay . Both Powers and Klay are Iraq War vets. Klay's stories are remarkable.

  George Packer

  War, Reading, Iraq

  Source: www.bostonglobe.com

  4 Copy quote

• This is what Newt Gingrich has wrought - is a politics in which it's very easy to destroy and very hard to build.

  George Packer

  Easy, Newts, Hard

  Source: www.npr.org

  4 Copy quote

• When you go to Washington and get off at Union Station, as I sometimes do, and see the Capitol building, I get this hopeless feeling that comes over me.

  George Packer

  Feelings, Unions, Hopeless

  "The 'Dangerous, Volatile Game' Trump Plays With The White Working Class". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, listen.sdpb.org. November 3, 2016.

  4 Copy quote

• Politics should seize the imagination.

  George Packer

  Imagination, Should

  Source: www.npr.org

  4 Copy quote

• The literature of the Spanish Civil War is also important to me. Above all George Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia" as well as the writing of John Dos Passos and Ernest Hemingway. They worked on a film together in Spain during that war, which ended their friendship.

  George Packer

  War, Writing, Together

  Source: www.bostonglobe.com

  10 Copy quote

• There's a great book about that, "The Breaking Point" by Stephen Koch . It won't improve your opinion of [Ernest] Hemingway.

  George Packer

  Book, Point Break, Opinion

  Source: www.bostonglobe.com

  4 Copy quote

• I've read a lot of war writing, even World War I writing, the British war poetry of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves's memoir "Goodbye to All That," and a civilian memoir "Testament of Youth" by Vera Brittain .

  George Packer

  Goodbye, War, Writing

  Source: www.bostonglobe.com

  4 Copy quote

• What goes on in a person's head, what impels them to a political choice, it's a pretty complicated question.

  George Packer

  Choices, Political, Goes On

  Source: www.npr.org

  4 Copy quote

• I don't think of Hillary Clinton as a bad choice. She's an uninspiring choice. She is a deeply imperfect choice, largely for reasons of her own tendency to get into a defensive crouch and create greater problems for herself and the rest of us by refusing to have a transparent reckoning.

  George Packer

  Thinking, Choices, Imperfect

  "The 'Dangerous, Volatile Game' Trump Plays With The White Working Class". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, wmra.org. November 3, 2016.

  4 Copy quote

• There's the basket of deplorables, who are bigots of various stripes, misogynists, anti-Muslim, racists, homophobes.

  George Packer

  Stripes, Racist, Baskets

  Source: www.npr.org

  4 Copy quote

• Politics should be, you know, as exciting as literature, as exciting film.

  George Packer

  Literature, Film, Should

  Source: www.npr.org

  4 Copy quote

Page 2 of 3

First

← Prev

1

2

3

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin