George Packer Quotes & Sayings

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Character is destiny, and politicians usually get the scandals they deserve, with a sense of inevitability about them.”

“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.”

“The Senate was an odd compromise between the founders and the early leaders of the republic who wanted a single house which was based on popular sovereignty representing the people and those founders who wanted two houses, the upper house, the Senate, being the more aristocratic.”

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

“Everything seems set up for success in digital journalism - money, eyeballs, software, brands.”

“It's a cliche that the Senate is broken, and like most cliches, it's true.”

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