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George Packer


American
August 13, 1960
Novelist
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Ambition, of course, is the politician's currency.


George Packer
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In the extremity of war, character is revealed.


George Packer
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The best example of Obama's success in foreign policy is Iran.


George Packer
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On foreign policy, Obama has talked softly and carried a big stick.


George Packer
Tags: Big Obama Policy
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Afghanistan can't police its borders, and its neighbors give sanctuary and assistance to insurgents.


George Packer
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A great writer requires a great biography, and a great biography must tell the truth.


George Packer
Tags: Great Truth Must
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
Tags: Had Long Before
Last year, in the year 2008, it just became normal to watch great American institutions crumble, almost dissolve like sand.
George Packer
Tags: Great Like Just
Together, Apple and Walmart represent the intense separation of American life into blue and red, rich and poor, overpriced and undersold, hyperconnected and left behind.
George Packer
My readers know my views on politics and politicians because I make no secret of them in my comments for 'The New Yorker' and elsewhere.
George Packer
American wars in Muslim countries created some extremists and inflamed many more while producing a security vacuum that allowed them to wreak mayhem.
George Packer
Tags: More Them Some
The libertarian worship of individual freedom, and contempt for social convention, comes easiest to people who have never really had to grow up.
George Packer
White male privilege remains alive in America, but the phrase would seem odd, if not infuriating, to a sixty-year-old man working as a Walmart greeter in southern Ohio.
George Packer
Tags: Would Man Working
So many writers grew up in tortured isolation, in revolt against their families. I and my sister were in a house where writing was considered the worthiest thing you could try to do.
George Packer
Tags: You Up Thing
Certain murderous ideas are in the air worldwide, and they are finding individuals in scattered places in different ways, and every attack spreads them further, plants an idea in a new head.
George Packer
Tags: Them Every New
The constellation of opinion called the blogosphere consists, like the stars themselves, partly of gases. This is what makes blogs addictive - that is, both pleasurable and destructive: They're so easy to consume and so endlessly available.
George Packer
Tags: Like Makes Both
As America has grown less economically equal, a citizen's ability to move upward has fallen behind that of citizens in other Western democracies. We are no longer the country where anyone can become anything.
George Packer
Part of the mystique of blogs is their protean quality: They work both sides of the divide between politics and media, further blurring the already fuzzy distinctions between reporter, pundit, political operative, activist, and citizen.
George Packer
Lawyers, judges, doctors, shrinks, accountants, investigators and, not least, journalists could not do the most basic tasks without a veil of secrecy. Why shouldn't the same be true of those professionals who happen to be government officials?
George Packer
'The Assassins' Gate' is a very tightly controlled story of the ideas that led to the war and the consequences of those ideas in Iraq, and there is no doubt about where it is going and what kind of groundwork is being laid.
George Packer
Tags: War About Very
No one pretends anymore that the Olympics are just about sports. It's routine to talk about what effect holding the Games in this or that capital will have on the host country's international reputation, how a nation's prestige can be raised by its medal count.
George Packer
Tags: Sports About Just
Walmart's period of explosive growth coincided with decades of wage stagnation and deindustrialization. By applying relentless downward pressure on prices and wages, the company came to dominate both consumer spending and employment in small towns and rural areas across the middle of the country.
George Packer
Tags: Country Came Both
Foreign policy exactly suits Obama's strong points as a leader, which turn out not to be giving the masses a clear sense of direction and hope, but instead exercising good judgment on a case-by-case basis while thinking many steps ahead of the present moment.
George Packer
Tags: Good Hope Out