George Packer Quotes
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Ambition, of course, is the politician's currency.
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Al Qaeda asks its recruits to establish their bona fides as a condition of membership, even requiring answers to a long questionnaire. But ISIS has democratized and globalized jihad by lowering the entry bar to an eve-of-destruction YouTube pledge of allegiance to the caliphate - and even that could probably be waived.
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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.
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I am never going to be able to rest easy in having established a posthumous connection to my father. I'll always be groping for what I can't have.
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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.
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The difference between a reporter, a newspaper columnist, a paid speaker, a television personality, a radio talk show host, a blogger, a movie producer, a publicist, and a political strategist, is growing less - and not more - distinct.
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The next great technology revolution might be around the corner, but it won't automatically improve most people's lives. That will depend on politics, which is indeed ugly but also inescapable.
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Surrendering to jargon is a sign of journalism's dismal lack of self-confidence in the optimized age of content-management systems.
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America's vast population of working poor can only get so poor before even Walmart is out of reach.
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I worked as a carpenter for a few years. I began writing. I wrote a book about my time in Africa - that came out in 1988 - called 'The Village of Waiting.'
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With work increasingly invisible, it's much harder to grasp the human effects, the social contours, of the Internet economy.
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A religion is not just a set of texts but the living beliefs and practices of its adherents.
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If you've ever left a bag of clothes outside the Salvation Army or given to a local church drive, chances are that you've dressed an African.
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The Olympics are never just about sports.
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I am not a pure fiction writer, nor am I an academic writer. Somehow I ended up in this blended area of literary journalism.
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Obama is the splendid fruit of a meritocracy.
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Amazon's identity and goals are never clear and always fluid, which makes the company destabilizing and intimidating.
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The war in Afghanistan is not of a peace with the rest of Obama's worldview. It's a holdover from the era that his election was supposed to bring to a close.
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Inequality saps the economy by draining the buying power of Americans whose incomes have stagnated, forcing them to rely on debt to fund education, housing, and health care.
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Millions don't rally to the banner of Uncertainty.
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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.
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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.
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The base of the party, the middle-aged white working class, has suffered at least as much as any demographic group because of globalization, low-wage immigrant labor, and free trade. Trump sensed the rage that flared from this pain and made it the fuel of his campaign.
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It's - the working class of San Francisco and the Bay Area is being pushed out of its old neighborhoods because of the skyrocketing cost of housing, and there's no real working class left because these are jobs for engineers and managers and designers - very smart people.