George Packer Quotes

Since the 1970s, I have asked students if they would first try to save their drowning dog or a drowning stranger. And for 40 years I have received the same results: One third vote for their dog, one third for the stranger, and one third don't know what they would do.

I mean that I think I find the psychology of people more interesting than politics. I think the psychology of politics is more interesting than straight politics.

Is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest?

We must take man as we find him, and if we expect him to serve the public we must interest his passions in doing so.

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

The beauty and riddle in studying the motives of any politician is in trying to decide what is idealism and what is self-interest, and often we are left to conclude that the answer is a mixture of the two.

When the opportunities come, Cemaat participants, just like any other citizen will make their choices based on their values.

I never fight for the money, but every person is different.

I have very purposely never signed up with commercial lecture agencies as most, I think, prominent historical authors do because, to me, that's a contradiction of who I believe I am given my absorption of the teaching of Martin Luther King, Jr.

I don't get fazed by things easily. I don't really care about much; I'm just not interested in a lot. I'm just interested in the well being of my close ones, my music, the message I'm portraying, how my efforts are contributing to society.

If you only vote with your back pocket in mind or your own best interest in mind, I believe, it is my belief that's a terrible, terrible way of thinking.

The people in my family couldn't adjust to the political atmosphere around me. I didn't want my political ambitions to cause stress or trauma for my family. I didn't want any name, fame, or money at the cost of my family.

I get frustrated with films that entertain me but ultimately dodge a moral question about how you should try and live.

It's good to learn and be engaged and listen to people, see what's going on. But that's not the motivator: if I was a political person, I'd have gone into politics.

Roark smiled, "Gail, if this boat were sinking, I'd give my life to save you. Not because it's any kind of duty. Only because I like you, for reasons and standards of my own. I could die for you. But I couldn't and wouldn't live for you.

Ultimately, everyone is acting out of what they feel is the best choice. In a way, they're all trying to improve the world. And I think that those basic choices make the world a better place.

The vices and the virtues are written in a language the world cannot construe; it reads them in a vile translation, and the translators are Failure and Success.

We manifest character when self-sacrifice for the sake of our principles becomes more important than compromise for the sake of popularity.

Unless you have found something in life to live for that is more important to you than your own life, you will always be a slave. For all another man needs to do is threaten to take your life to get you to do his bidding.

Man habitually sacrifices his life to his purse, but he sacrifices his purse to his vanity.

For I can raise no money by vile means. By heaven, I had rather coin my heart, And drop my blood for drachmas

The self-bound individual always forgets that his self would be safeguarded better and automatically the more he prepares himself for the welfare of mankind, and that in this respect no limits are set for him.

It is strangely absurd to suppose that a million of human beings, collected together, are not under the same moral laws which bind each of them separately.

Man—every man—is an end in himself, not a means to the ends of others; he must live for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself; he must work for his rational self-interest, with the achievement of his own happiness as the highest moral purpose of his life.

The ambitious sacrifices all to what he terms honor, as the miser all to money.