Perry Anderson Quotes & Sayings

[P]olitics is always a Kampfplatz. — Perry Anderson

Moral indignation is too precious an export to be wasted at home — Perry Anderson

Intellectuals are judged not by their morals, but by the quality of their ideas, which are rarely reducible to simple verdicts of truth or falsity, if only because banalities are by definition accurate. — Perry Anderson

[A] resistance that dispenses with consolations is always stronger than one which relies on them. — Perry Anderson

a genius of means, barren of ends — Perry Anderson

Structurally, by reason of their smaller numbers and greater resources, virtually all ruling classes enjoy an advantage over the ruled in their capacity for collective action. Their internal lines of communication are more compact; their wealth offers an all-purpose medium of power, convertible into any number of forms of domination; their intelligence systems scan the political landscape from a greater height. More numerous and more dispersed, less equipped materially, less armed culturally, subordinate classes always tend, in the sociologist Michael Mann's phrase, to be 'organisationally outflanked — Perry Anderson

Nothing like this has been attempted before. ( ... ) It might be called a literary Porto Alegre. That implies a beginning, with much fierce argument and discussion to come. But whatever the outcome of ensuing criticisms or objections, The World Republic of Letters
empire more than republic, as Casanova shows
is likely to have the same sort of liberating impact at large as Said's Orientalism, with which it stands comparison. — Perry Anderson

It should be a matter of honour on the Left to write at least as well, without redundancy or clutter, as its adversaries. — Perry Anderson