Everyone finds justification for his or her views in logic and analysis, but a personal philosophy often emerges from some archaic part of the mind, an early idea of how the world should be.
George PackerRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The industrial worker's complex portrayal reflects the human experience within capitalism's transformative effects.
George Packer's quote illustrates how the image of the industrial worker has become a symbol of the struggles and societal shifts brought about by capitalism in the past century. Through various mediums such as literature and film, these workers are depicted in diverse roles—victims, demons, or heroes—highlighting both the harsh realities and the human stories that accompany industrialization and economic change.
Themes
IndustrialWorkerCapitalismSocietyTransformationHumanity
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about socioeconomic reforms, one might reference this quote to emphasize the human aspect of labor.
More from George Packer
All quotes →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.
George PackerRead
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.
George PackerRead
As America has grown less economically equal, a citizen's ability to move upward has fallen behind that of citizens in other Western democracies. We are no longer the country where anyone can become anything.
George PackerRead
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.
George PackerRead
Abstract sympathy with the working class as an economic entity is easy, but the feeling can vanish on contact with actual members of the group, who often arrive with disturbing beliefs and powerful resentments - who might not sound or look like people urban progressives want to know.
George PackerRead
Similar quotes
I have neither permitted, nor shall I permit, the things which have been settled by the holy fathers to be violated by any innovation.
Pope Leo IRead
As long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think, free to think what they will, freedom can never be lost and science can never regress.
Marcel ProustRead
We have thought of peace as the passive and war as the active way of living. The opposite is true. War is not the most strenuous life. It is a kind of rest-cure compared to the task of reconciling our differences.
Mary Parker FollettRead
History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.
Napoleon BonaparteRead
It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen.
AristotleRead
For every man the world is as fresh as it was at the first day, and as full of untold novelties for him who has the eyes to see them.
Thomas HuxleyRead