This paper discusses conditions for stability of switched linear systems under arbitrary switching, formulated in terms of smallness of appropriate commutators of the matrices generating the switched system. Such conditions provide robust variants of well-known stability conditions requiring these commutators to vanish and leading to the existence of a common quadratic Lyapunov function. The main contribution of the paper is to apply the Łojasiewicz inequality to characterize the persistence of a common quadratic Lyapunov function as the matrices are perturbed so that their commutators no longer vanish but instead are sufficiently small. It is shown how known constructions of common quadratic Lyapunov functions for commuting matrices and for matrices generating nilpotent or solvable Lie algebras can be used, in conjunction with the Łojasiewicz inequality, to estimate allowable deviations of the commutators from zero.