Michael Moorcock: Trending quotes

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Michael Moorcock: 448 quotes8 likes

“Everything you have done, my nobles, has been stupid. You have been cruel, greedy, careless of others’ lives and wills. You have been blind, thoughtless, provincial and unimaginative. It seems to me that a government so careless of anything but its own gratification should be at very least replaced.”

Michael Moorcock

Book 3, Chapter 4 “Certain Matters Resolved in Quarzhasaat” (p. 280)
The Elric Cycle, The Fortress of the Pearl (1989)

“Fate is cruel, Oone. It would be better if it provided us with one unaltering path. Instead it forces us to make choices, never to know if those choices were for the best.”

Michael Moorcock

“We are mortals,” she said with a shrug. “That is our particular doom.”
Book 3, Chapter 3 “Celebrations at the Silver Flower Oasis” (p. 267)
The Elric Cycle, The Fortress of the Pearl (1989)

“I now know that legends in themselves have no power. The power comes from the uses that the living make of the legend. The legends merely represent an ideal.”

Michael Moorcock

Book 3, Chapter 2 “The Destruction in the Fortress” (p. 260)
The Elric Cycle, The Fortress of the Pearl (1989)

“We have a scanty notion of justice and the obligations of rule involve little more than inventing new terrors by which we may cow and control others. Power, I think, is a habit as terrible as the potion I must now sip in order to sustain myself. It feeds upon itself. It is a hungry beast, devouring those who would possess it and those who hate it—devouring even those who own it.”

Michael Moorcock

Book 1, Chapter 5 “The Dreamthief’s Pledge” (p. 183)
The Elric Cycle, The Fortress of the Pearl (1989)

“We set high store by prophecies here in the desert. It seems that our longing for help might have coloured our reason.”

Michael Moorcock

Book 1, Chapter 5 “The Dreamthief’s Pledge” (p. 181)
The Elric Cycle, The Fortress of the Pearl (1989)

“This was Elric’s dream, more coherent now than it had ever been. This was his dream and it was why he traveled the world, why he refused the power which was his, why he risked his life, his mind, his love and everything else he valued, for he believed that there was no life worth living that was not risked in pursuit of knowledge and justice. And this was why his fellow countrymen feared him. Justice was not obtained, he believed, by administration but by experience. One must know what it was to suffer humiliation and powerlessness; at least to some degree, before one could entirely appreciate its effect. One must give up power if one was to achieve true justice. This was not the logic of Empire, but it was the logic of one who truly loved the world and desired to see an age dawn when all people would be free to pursue their ambitions in dignity and self-respect.”

Michael Moorcock

Book 1, Chapter 3 “On the Red Road” (p. 160)
The Elric Cycle, The Fortress of the Pearl (1989)

“Here information and philosophies were exchanged, together with all manner of goods. This was a court whose energies were not devoted to maintaining itself unchanged for eternity, but to every kind of new idea and lively, humane discussion, which welcomed fresh thought not as a threat to its existence but as a very necessity to its continued well-being, whose wealth was devoted to experiment in the arts and sciences, to supporting those who were needy, to aiding thinkers and scholars. The Bright Empire’s brightness would come no longer from the glow of putrefaction but from the light of reason and good will.”

Michael Moorcock

Book 1, Chapter 3 “On the Red Road” (p. 160)
The Elric Cycle, The Fortress of the Pearl (1989)

“The albino reflected on the power of the human mind to build a fantasy and then defend it with complete determination as a reality.”

Michael Moorcock

Book 1, Chapter 2 “The Pearl at the Heart of the World” (p. 139)
The Elric Cycle, The Fortress of the Pearl (1989)

“And upon those three lies was Elric’s destiny to be built, for it is only about things which concern us most profoundly that we lie clearly and with profound conviction.”

Michael Moorcock

Book 3, Chapter 5 “The Pale King’s Mercy” (p. 118)
The Elric Cycle, Elric of Melniboné (1972)

“Destiny can contain a few extra threads in her design and still accomplish her original aims.”

Michael Moorcock

Book 3, Chapter 4 “Two Black Swords” (p. 114)
The Elric Cycle, Elric of Melniboné (1972)

“It takes little intelligence to draw the obvious conclusion…”

Michael Moorcock

“Especially if one is blessed with only the barest information concerning other lands and peoples.”
Book 1, Chapter 2 “The Pearl at the Heart of the World” (p. 138)
The Elric Cycle, The Fortress of the Pearl (1989)

“Are you trying to talk peace terms?”

Michael Moorcock

Book 2, Chapter 5 “A Question of Attitudes” (p. 368)
Oswald Bastable, The Steel Tsar (1981)
Context: “I’ve given that up,” said Makhno. “It doesn’t appear to work. You mention peace and everyone tries to shoot you or jail you.”

“We are still ruled, in some ways, by our Church. We are a people more cursed by religion and its manifestations and assumptions than any other. The Steel Tsar, with his messianic socialism, offers us religion again, perhaps. You English have never had quite the same need for God. We have known despair and conquest too often to ignore Him altogether.”

Michael Moorcock

He shrugged. “Old habits, Mr Bastable. Religion is the panacea for defeat. We have a great tendency to rationalize our despair in mystical and utopian terms.”
Book 2, Chapter 4 “The Black Ships” (p. 361)
Oswald Bastable, The Steel Tsar (1981)

“There could be an end to all this, when the Lords of the Higher Worlds and all the machinery of cosmic mystery shall be no more. And perhaps that is why they fear mortals so much. The secret of their destruction, I suspect, lies in us, though we have yet to realize our own power.”

Michael Moorcock Erekosë

“And do you have a hint of what that power may be, Eternal Champion?” said Alisaard.
I smiled. “I think it is simply the power to conceive of a multiverse which has no need of the supernatural, which, indeed, could abolish it if so desired!”
Book 3, Chapter 2 (p. 646)
Erekosë, The Dragon in the Sword (1986)

“Chaos has her moods and whims, that’s all. As I told you, she cannot remain stable. It is in her nature to be forever changing.”

Michael Moorcock Erekosë

“While it is in the nature of Law,” Alisaard explained, “to be forever fixed. The Balance is there to ensure that neither Law nor Chaos ever gain complete ascendancy, for the one offers sterility while the other offers only sensation.”
Book 3, Chapter 1 (p. 626)
Erekosë, The Dragon in the Sword (1986)

“You only need fear the bees if you’ve broken the law.”

Michael Moorcock

That familiar phrase was used to justify every encroachment on citizens’ liberty.
Source: Short fiction, The Lost Canal (2013), p. 346

“Time and Matter are both ideas. Matter makes a more immediate impression on Man, but Time’s effects are longer lasting.”

Michael Moorcock book The Time Dweller

Source: The Time Dweller (p. 22), Short fiction, The Time Dweller (1969)

“You fail to understand, my friend. We do not control time. If anything, it controls us. We simply measure it.”

Michael Moorcock book The Time Dweller

The Time Dweller (p. 15)
Short fiction, The Time Dweller (1969)

“I am already late, I fear. What time is it?”

Michael Moorcock book The Time Dweller

“Time? Why the present, of course.”
The Time Dweller (p. 13)
Short fiction, The Time Dweller (1969)