Quotes by George Packer

About George Packer:

George Packer is an American journalist, novelist, and playwright. He is best known for his writings for The New Yorker about U.S. foreign policy and for his book The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq. More recently, he wrote The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America, covering the history of America from 1978 to 2012. That book won the National Book Award for Nonfiction in November 2013.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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

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

George Packer

Whether as victim, demon, or hero, the industrial worker of the past century filled the public imagination in books, movies, news stories, and even popular songs, putting a grimy human face on capitalism while dramatizing the social changes and confl...

George Packer

It's essential for the U.S. and Europe to prevent Putin from going farther and reversing the hard-won independence of former Soviet republics.

George Packer

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

George Packer

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

George Packer

Before Google, and long before Facebook, Bezos had realized that the greatest value of an online company lay in the consumer data it collected.

George Packer

To many book professionals, Amazon is a ruthless predator. The company claims to want a more literate world - and it came along when the book world was in distress, offering a vital new source of sales.

George Packer

I actually think that self-interest is overrated as an all-purpose guide to political motive. It leaves out something at least as powerful and immovable - individual psychology.

George Packer

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

What the Web has never figured out is how to pay for reporting, which, with the collapse of print newspapers, is in desperately short supply, and without which even the most prolific commenters will someday run out of things to say.

George Packer

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

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

George Packer

The Senate was an odd compromise between the founders and the early leaders of the republic who wanted a single house which was based on popular sovereignty representing the people and those founders who wanted two houses, the upper house, the Senate...

George Packer

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

George Packer

Too many talented and supremely calculating politicians, including Nixon and Clinton, have destroyed their careers, or come close, by acting in ways that were obviously against their own interests.

George Packer

This malignant persistence since September 11th is the biggest surprise of all. In previous decades, sneak attacks, stock-market crashes, and other great crises became hinges on which American history swung in dramatically new directions. But events ...

George Packer

The attacks of 9/11 were the biggest surprise in American history, and for the past ten years we haven't stopped being surprised. The war on terror has had no discernible trajectory, and, unlike other military conflicts, it's almost impossible to def...

George Packer

[T]he enduring problem for liberals, as for everyone else, is not whether history will judge them wise or foolish regarding the war on terrorism; it is, rather, the way that the past decade has splintered them away from other Americans. This fracture...

George Packer

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

Author Bio

  • NameGeorge Packer
  • DescriptionAmerican journalist and writer
  • BornAugust 13, 1960
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionJournalist; Author; Novelist
  • AwardsGuggenheim Fellowship