Michael Moorcock: Trending quotes

“Machine-devoured, all his hours were given o’er to that insidious circuitry, and old grew he, unnoticing, in the service of his engines.”

Book 3, Chapter 1 (p. 626)
The Dragon in the Sword (1986)

Michael Moorcock book The Sword of the Dawn

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

““Evil flourishes best in disguise,” said Otto grimly. His companions nodded in assent.
“And the best disguise is simple” said the youth, Federit Shaus. “Honest patriotism. Joyful idealism.”
“You’re a cynic, lad,” von Bek smiled at him. “But sadly my own experience would support your view. Show me a man who cries ‘my country right or wrong’, and I’ll show you one who’d cheerfully murder half his own nation in the name of patriotism.””

““Petersburg socialism seems cold to the likes of our Cossacks, who would rather worship personalities than embrace ideas.”
I shared his irony. “You make them sound like Americans.””

Book 2, Chapter 3 (p. 550)
The Dragon in the Sword (1986)

“Do not speculate, Sedenko, on things for which no evidence exists. You will waste your time.”

The Steel Tsar (1981)
Source: Book 2, Chapter 4 “The Black Ships” (p. 361)

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

Source: The War Hound and the World's Pain (1981), Chapter 9 (p. 103)

“I understood that it was only the very best in us, our capacity for love and self-respect, that enabled us to survive in a perpetually fragmenting multiverse. Only our deepest sense of justice allowed us to remain sane and relish the wonders of chaotic Time and Space, to be free at least of fear. Further violence would bring only an endless chain of bloodshed and an inevitable descent of our race into bestiality and ultimate insentience. To survive, we must love.”

“Women are always underestimated by men,” said Alisaard, a note of satisfaction in her voice, “and this enables them sometimes to gather far more power to themselves than the men suspect.”

Book 2, Chapter 7 “A Mechanical Man” (pp. 388-389)
The Steel Tsar (1981)

Michael Moorcock Erekosë

Book 2, Chapter 4 (p. 557)
Erekosë, The Dragon in the Sword (1986)

“It remained difficult for me to understand how some people are simply born mentally deformed, lacking all the natural moral restraints and imagination which dictate the actions of most of us, however partially. Such creatures have learned from childhood to ape the appropriate sentiments when it suits them, to charm or bully their opponents, to agree to anything, to tell any lie and to pursue their own ends with implacable determination.
“Such men and women are the true aliens amongst you and it is ironic how frequently we come to rule you. We use your very best instincts and deepest emotions against you. We convince you that we alone can satisfy your need for security and comfort and then we drain you dry of everything save perpetual terror. Ha, ha, ha!””

“If you were to believe all the old, degenerate German legends, there’s a Grail in every castle, a Charlemagne or an Arthur under every mound! There not a noble house without at least one werewolf offspring or a younger son who’s made a pact with the Devil, an uncle practising the profane arts of alchemy, a vampirical grandfather, a mad monk, a ruined abbey in the grounds where witches meet, an incarcerated lunatic (or heiress—or both), an infanticide or two (and a patricide), and, of course, a family ghost.”

Book 2, Chapter 7 “A Mechanical Man” (p. 389)
The Steel Tsar (1981)

“The time has come for the dismantling of fantasies. That is already happening to our universe. Now that we have this one chance of survival we must finally rid ourselves of fantasies and seize that chance!
For centuries our race has built on false assumptions. If you build a fantasy based on a false assumption and continue to build on such a fantasy, your whole existence becomes a lie which you implant in others who are too lazy or too busy to question its truth.
In this manner you threaten the very existence of reality, because, by refusing to obey its laws, those laws engulf and destroy you. The human race has for too long been manufacturing convenient fantasies and calling them laws. For ages this was so. Take war, for instance. Politicians assume that something is true, assume that strife is inevitable, and by building on such false assumptions, lo and behold, they create further wars which they have, ostensibly, sought to prevent.
We have, until now, accepted too many fantasies as being truths, too many truths as fantasies. And we have one last chance to discover the real nature of our existence. I am prepared to take it!”

Source: The City in the Autumn Stars (1986), Chapter 5 (p. 263)

“I had learned, after all, to trust neither religion nor politics and to put my faith in the realities of metal, wood and steam, in practical engineering, whose rules could neither be changed nor made the subject of morality, so why should I show reverence for mere antiquity?”

Source: The Sundered Worlds (1965), Chapter 7 (pp. 229-230)

“He had thought his wars over. Now he realized peace had been merely a lull.”

Source: The City in the Autumn Stars (1986), Chapter 5 (p. 262)

“Like so many fanatics, he possessed an appalling streak of timidity and terror which feared all that was not absolutely familiar. As his power increased, he would doubtless attempt to destroy anything that made him anxious.”

Source: The City in the Autumn Stars (1986), Chapter 17 (p. 407)

“Do you know what damnation can be, Sir? It can be a state of permanent caution, making one chronically unable to risk anything, even a risk which might save one from extinction.”

Book 2, Chapter 7 “A Mechanical Man” (p. 384)
The Steel Tsar (1981)

““And is adventure and sensation all we should seek, Meliadus?”
“Aye—why not? All is chaos, there is no meaning to existence, there is only one advantage to living one’s life and that is to discover all the sensations the human mind and body is capable of feeling.””

Source: The City in the Autumn Stars (1986), Chapter 7 (p. 283)

Michael Moorcock book The Runestaff

Source: Book 2, Chapter 1 “Whispering in Secret Rooms” (pp. 428-429), The Runestaff (1969)

“A whole tangle of series, possibly including everything Moorcock's written, not excluding his grocery lists, but I'm not sure; certainly includes most of his fantasy. Various subseries are declared complete every so often, as for example in an ad for the Last Elric Book in the current issue of F& SF; such declarations sometimes prove true, but on the other hand, I've seen several previous Last Elric Books.”

““You only need fear the bees if you’ve broken the law.” That familiar phrase was used to justify every encroachment on citizens’ liberty.”

Joe Bernstein, [d9rkbu$2t2$1@reader1.panix.com, 2005], describing the Eternal Champion series.
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“I could scarcely believe that these were the men who had done so much to influence the course of my own world’s history. It now seemed obvious that all of them were drugged in some way. They were acting like silly children. And yet I suppose I should have realized that it is in the nature of all such creatures to be at heart infantile. Only children believe they can achieve enormous power over the world without paying a price for that power. And the price so often is the sanity of the one who seeks it.”

Source: Short fiction, The Lost Canal (2013), p. 346

“The subtlest lie of all is the full truth.”

Book 3, Chapter 2 (p. 641)
The Dragon in the Sword (1986)

“The conqueror always assumes that his moral superiority—rather than his ferocious greed—is what has allowed him to triumph.”

Source: Short fiction, To Rescue Tanelorn... (1962), p. 474