164 Quotes by 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.

Good writing requires a character with a voice. Usually, the first sound bite is not the whole story.

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

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

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.

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.

With work increasingly invisible, it’s much harder to grasp the human effects, the social contours, of the Internet economy.

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.

You don’t have to be foreign policy expert to succeed as president, but you have to have ice water for blood.