George Packer quotes

Character is destiny, and politicians usually get the scandals they deserve, with a sense of inevitability about them. (George Packer)
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. View quote
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. View quote
George Packer
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. View quote
George Packer
Surrendering to jargon is a sign of journalism's dismal lack of self-confidence in the optimized age of content-management systems. View quote
George Packer
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. View quote
George Packer
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. View quote
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. View quote
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. View quote
George Packer
It seems preposterous now, but Amazon began as a bookstore. View quote
George Packer
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)
Before Google, and long before Facebook, Bezos had realized that the greatest value of an online company lay in the consumer data it collected. View quote
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 conflicts it brought. View quote
George Packer
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. View quote
George Packer
With work increasingly invisible, it's much harder to grasp the human effects, the social contours, of the Internet economy. View quote
George Packer
While starving refugees in Homs were providing target practice for government snipers, Bashar al-Assad's strongest international backer was in Sochi, at the Iceberg Skating Palace, visibly moved, smiling with deep satisfaction, as the Russians beautifully glided and leaped their way to the gold medal in the team event. View quote
George Packer
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. View quote
George Packer
It's a cliche that the Senate is broken, and like most cliches, it's true. View quote
George Packer
Amazon's identity and goals are never clear and always fluid, which makes the company destabilizing and intimidating. View quote
George Packer