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All hegemonies have their limits, and no policies ever achieve just what they intend. But the salient feature of the present is not that the world at large is out of control, but that it has never been subject to such an extent of control by one power, acting to diffuse and enforce one system, as we see today.

— Perry Anderson Spectrum: From Right to Left in the World of Ideas (2005)

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More quotes by Perry Anderson

Great men have foibles for which they can be forgiven; including an occasional failure to see where their greatness lies, or what might diminish it.

Spectrum: From Right to Left in the World of Ideas (2005)

The greater pleasures of reading the LRB are thus paid for in a more erratic and limited horizon.

Spectrum: From Right to Left in the World of Ideas (2005)

With the euro, that form of pressure has gone.

Putin’s control of the media is becoming more and more comprehensive. What is left over, that ownership does not ensure, self-censorship increasingly neuters. The Gleichschaltung of parliament and political parties is, if anything, even more impressive.

The – now shop-worn – label of ‘magical realism’ is customarily applied to Márquez’s novels. It has never fitted Vargas Llosa, who disavows the adjective.

Spectrum: From Right to Left in the World of Ideas (2005)

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Perry Anderson (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.