“… My life was a ‘world’-life – I lived the life of the human world. But the world had seemed to have stopped living for decades, to catch up a century within a few years. This is how I am only now coming into my own, somewhere on the way I have lost thirty years or so – waiting for Godot – until things were at par again, the world in its course had caught up with me. Looking back, all this seems somehow funny – that martyrdom of isolation was no more than a mirage – in truth I was waiting only for myself. Now the dice are cast against us (against you, against me). One more decade – and I would stand vindicated in my lifetime. My work is for Asia, for Africa, for the new peoples… The opposition which my world of thought has called forth at last, is a good sign. I should have loved to last and be at the fight, but man is a mortal thing…”

(Karl Polanyi. Letter to Bé de Waard, January 6, 1958. Karl Polanyi Archive)