Top George Packer Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

George Packer Biography

George Packer (born August 13, 1960) 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. Packer also wrote The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America, covering the history of America from 1978 to 2012. In November 2013, The Unwinding received the National Book Award for Nonfiction.

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George Packer Quotes

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

Americans, Important, Think, Thinking, Trying, Understand

Before the nineteen-seventies, most Republicans in Washington accepted the institutions of the welfare state, and most Democrats agreed with the logic of the Cold War. Despite the passions over various issues, government functioned pretty well. Legislators routinely crossed party lines when they voted, and when they drank; filibusters in the Senate were reserved for the biggest bills; think tanks produced independent research, not partisan talking points. The "D. " or "R. " after a politician's name did not tell you what he thought about everything, or everything you thought about him.

Drank, Independent, Party, Points, War

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.

Arches, Become, Motherland, Opposite, Opposites, War

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.

Disappointment, Fear, Heart, Leaves, Stronger

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

Blood, Expert, Foreign, Ice Water, Policy, President

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.

Party, Self, Broken, Volatile, Increasingly, Pressure

The ranks of educated professional swelled as more Americans went to college and more Americans sort of adopted a more cosmopolitan lifestyle and worldview. And as the Democrats were looking for an alternative to the unions who no longer seemed like a large enough base for the party, they found the educated who veered more toward a progressive cultural outlook, who may have had - may have been working in the financial sector, in entertainment, in media, in universities. That became really the rank and file of the Democratic Party over a long period of time.

College, Cosmopolitan, Entertainment, Media, Party, Time

Hillary Clinton's such a classic Democratic political figure and believes so much in institutions and in gradualism in the old way of reaching compromises with the opposition in the back rooms. That's what she did in Congress. It's what I imagine she'll try to do in the White House.

Believe, Congress, Democratic, Hillary, Political, White

We all have a dark side but we keep it in its place because it's destructive. And Donald Trump has said, no, no, bring it out because that's the energy we need in order to reverse all these horrible things that have been happening in America.

America, Dark, Destructive, Order, Side, Trump

Politics should seize the imagination.

Imagination, Politics, Seize, Should

It's kind of funny to read the work of ex-Marines and soldiers because what they said to me as a reporter was only a fraction of what they were thinking and feeling and saying to one another.

Feelings, Fraction, Marine, Read, Thinking, Work

We've just been sort of spinning our wheels for such a long time, for decades really, with each new president being considered illegitimate by the other side. That's been the case ever since Bill Clinton. And it's a - you can't keep frittering away your political capital that way and expect there not to be some long-term rot that sets in.

Frittering, Long, Political, President, Sort, Spinning

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

Basket, Baskets, Racist, Stripes, Various

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.

Ended, Film, Hemingway, Important, War, Writing

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

Choices, Complicated, Goes On, Impels, Political, Question

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.

Campaigns, Games, Gay, International, Terrorism, Threat

Depended on the soldier. To relax, most of them put on headphones or played video games. Later in the war some of the younger officers began to read a lot of anthropology because they realized that the basic problem was that they were trying to fight a war in a culture they didn't understand. They might have read someone like Margaret Mead.

Culture, Fighting, Games, Played, Realized, War

We focus on that really repulsive minority of racists. But then there's a continuum that goes all the way to, you know, what used to be called the white backlash or to, you know, the feelings of some white people that they're losing out and that the jobs and power and sort of the culture is drifting away from them and toward people who don't look like them, who don't - who they don't know very well. And that's not necessarily - I don't equate that with the hardcore ideological hatred of self-identified racists.

Away, Backlash, Drifting, Jobs, Self, White

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.

Book, Couple, Encouraging, Office, Sign

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.

Mass Destruction, Weapons, Victim, Mass, Gas, Everyone

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