Michael Moorcock: Trending quotes

“An unquestioned creed is a noose about the throat of Reason.”

I addressed no one. I addressed the universe. I addressed a void.

Chapter 15 (p. 154)
The von Bek family, The War Hound and the World's Pain (1981)

“Wild days, wild riders, and the stink of warfare across the world!”

Source: The City in the Autumn Stars (1986), Chapter 3 (p. 211)

“Do not thank me for saving your life. You do not realize yet what I have saved it for.”

Book 1, Chapter 3 “Elvereza Tozer” (p. 269)
The Sword of the Dawn (1968)

Michael Moorcock book The Jewel in the Skull

Book 3, Chapter 3 “The Warrior in Jet and Gold” (p. 113)
The Jewel in the Skull (1967)

“There were three known existing sapphires. One was in the Conquest of Space Museum on Terra, one was in the hands of United System President Polonius Delph—he was the richest man in seven worlds, or had been until he’d paid cash for his jewel. The other had been stolen soon after its discovery. Maybe Delph had it…
“From what I understand of your world, Delph isn’t the only one who wants the sapphires. He has rivals in the Plutocracy. Another mysterious collector? Or those rivals are competing for the presidency or they think they can ruin him. As you know, it’s a vicious circle in politics. You can’t get to be president unless you have the wealth and you can’t really make massive sums until you’re president.””

“In an infinite universe, all may become real sooner or later. Yet it is always up to mankind to make real what it really wishes to be real.”

Source: Short fiction, The Lost Canal (2013), p. 355

“My bargain with God included the undertaking that I should play no direct part, merely supervise mankind’s self-redemption. Like yourself, my agents are those whose independence of thought is already well-established.”

Source: Book 3, Chapter 7 “Project NFB” (p. 135), The Warlord of the Air (1971)

“Redefine the terms by which Man views the world, and thus eventually you redefine the world itself.”

Source: The City in the Autumn Stars (1986), Chapter 13 (p. 367; the speaker is Lucifer)

“How true it is when they say there is nothing which makes a man more furious than the discovery that he has deceived himself!”

Source: The City in the Autumn Stars (1986), Chapter (p. 367)

“One can act too much in the cause of self-preservation and experience nothing fresh as a result.”

The Dragon in the Sword (1986)
Source: Book 1, Chapter 4 (p. 509)

Michael Moorcock book The War Hound and the World's Pain

Source: The War Hound and the World's Pain (1981), Chapter 2 (p. 25)

“Here, I thought, I had found the human race in its final stages of decadence—perverse, insouciant, without ambition. And I could not blame them. After all, they had no future.”

Michael Moorcock book Phoenix in Obsidian

Phoenix in Obsidian (1970)
Source: Book 2 “The Champion’s Road” Chapter 3 “The Lord Spiritual” (p. 354)

“Only Bowgentle, the philosopher-poet, his old friend, had an inkling of what he meant and even then Bowgentle believed that it reflected not on the nature of the landscape but on the particular nature of Count Brass’s mind.
“You’re exhausted, disorientated,” Bowgentle would say. “The ordering mechanism of the brain is working too hard, so you see a pattern to existence that, in fact, only stems from your own weariness and disturbance…””

“I looked down at her shriveled corpse. It lay across that of her brother. One had represented the evil of the world, the other the good. Yet both had been defeated by pride, by ambition, by a promise of immortality.”

Book 1, Chapter 2 “The Flamingoes’ Dance” (p. 261)
The Sword of the Dawn (1968)

“Knowledge ceases to be wisdom when one has no method for making sense or use of what one learns.”

Book 3, Chapter 4 (p. 669)
The Dragon in the Sword (1986)

“Gandhi had been right. There was only one way to behave, even if it seemed, in the short term, against one’s self-interest. Surely it was in one’s self-interest in the long term to exhibit generosity, humanity, kindness and a sense of justice to one’s fellow men. It was cynicism of Beesley’s kind which had, after all, led to the threatened extinction of the whole human race. There could be no such thing s a “righteous” war, for war was by its very nature an act of injustice against the individual, but there could be such a thing as an “unrighteous” war—an evil war, a war begun by men who were utterly corrupt, both morally and intellectually. I had begun to think that it was a definition of those who would make war—that whatever motives they claimed, whatever ideals they promoted, whatever “threat” they referred to, they could not be excused—because of their actions they could only be of a degenerate and immoral character.”

Source: Book 2, Chapter 7 (p. 591), The Dragon in the Sword (1986)

Michael Moorcock book The Land Leviathan

Book 2, Chapter 4 “The Triumphant Beast” (p. 262)
The Land Leviathan (1974)

“Better wicked Lucifer for a master, thought I, than a pious Tyrant!”

““I think you serve a great purpose, Hawkmoon. I think your destiny is a noble one.”
Hawkmoon laughed. “And yet I do not pine for a noble destiny—merely a secure one.””

Source: The City in the Autumn Stars (1986), Chapter 13 (p. 361)

“It’s getting late. I must return to my ship or my men will think I’ve drowned and be celebrating.”

The Sword of the Dawn (1968)
Source: Book 2, Chapter 11 “The Parting” (p. 380)

Michael Moorcock book The Eternal Champion

Source: The Eternal Champion (1970), Chapter 10 “First Sight of the Eldren” (p. 58)

““I have heard it said it is often safer to dwell in the lion’s lair than outside it,” Oladahn said.
“Safer still to live in a land where there are no lions,” Count Brass retorted.”