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Michael Moorcock Quotes
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Michael John Moorcock is an English writer and musician, primarily of science fiction and fantasy, who has also published literary novels. He is best known for his novels about the character Elric of Melniboné, a seminal influence on the field of fantasy since the 1960s and 70s.

As editor of the British science fiction magazine New Worlds, from May 1964 until March 1971 and then again from 1976 to 1996, Moorcock fostered the development of the science fiction "New Wave" in the UK and indirectly in the United States. His publication of Bug Jack Barron by Norman Spinrad as a serial novel was notorious; in Parliament some British MPs condemned the Arts Council for funding the magazine. He is also a successful recording musician, contributing to the bands Hawkwind, Blue Öyster Cult and his own project.

In 2008, The Times named Moorcock in its list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945". Wikipedia  

✵ 18. December 1939   •   Other names مایکل مورکوک, Μάικλ Μούρκοκ
Michael Moorcock photo
Michael Moorcock: 224   quotes 8   likes

Michael Moorcock Quotes

“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.”

Michael Moorcock

Joe Bernstein, [d9rkbu$2t2$1@reader1.panix.com, 2005], describing the Eternal Champion series.
About

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.”

Michael Moorcock

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

Fear , Law , Bee

“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.”

Michael Moorcock

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

Men , Children , World , Way

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

Michael Moorcock

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

Truth , Lie

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

Michael Moorcock

Book 3, Chapter 5 “The Coming of the Air Fleets” (p. 121)
The Warlord of the Air (1971)

“As I suggested to John Major (a British Prime Minister) when he told us that socialism was dead, he should not be too triumphant. After all, until his predecessor Mrs Thatcher revived it, we thought feudalism pretty much over and done with, too.”

Michael Moorcock

Introduction (p. vi)
The Warlord of the Air (1971)

Dead

“Paternalism and centralism, the bane of capitalist as well as socialist politics, are for me the permanent enemy of democracy.”

Michael Moorcock

Introduction (p. vi)
The Warlord of the Air (1971)

Democracy

“The problems for which I could find no solution in fact had no solution.”

Michael Moorcock book The Eternal Champion

Source: The Eternal Champion (1970), Chapter 23 “In Loos Ptokai” (p. 137)

Problem

“It is the spirit of Salem—the corrupting influence of Puritanism which in itself is perversion of the Stoic ideal—infecting what remains of a nation which could have set an example to the world.”

Michael Moorcock book The Land Leviathan

Book 1, Chapter 8 “A Decision in Cold Blood” (p. 233)
The Land Leviathan (1974)

World

“They’re Mabden, of course. They are afraid of the city. Afraid of almost everything. And being permitted no weapons with which they can attack what they fear, they are reduced to what you see. It seems the Mabden can only kill or run away. Their brains are of no use to them.”

Michael Moorcock

Book 2, Chapter 6 (p. 581)
The Dragon in the Sword (1986)

Fear

“This vast pile of natural beauty, those crags and fir trees and hovering hawks, those echoing ravines and vast tumblings of snow and earth, brought me swiftly to the understanding of my own insignificance and, indeed, the insignificance of all human struggle.”

Michael Moorcock book The City in the Autumn Stars

Source: The City in the Autumn Stars (1986), Chapter 2 (pp. 194-195)

Beauty , Understanding , Nature , Tree

““Are you trying to talk peace terms?”
“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.””

Michael Moorcock book The Steel Tsar

Book 2, Chapter 5 “A Question of Attitudes” (p. 368)
The Steel Tsar (1981)

Peace , Appearance

“I at least had some knowledge of the warping, mutating power of the Lords of Disorder, the supernatural entities who on John Daker’s Earth would be called Arch-Demons, the Dukes of Hell. I knew that they made use of our most treasured virtues and most honoured emotions. That they were capable of almost any illusion. And that all that was keeping them from pouring forth from their stronghold to engulf so many other Realms of the multiverse was their caution, their unreadiness or unwillingness to war against the rival power of Law. But if we humans invited them to our realms, they would come.”

Michael Moorcock

Book 2, Chapter 9 (p. 613)
The Dragon in the Sword (1986)

War , Law , Hell , Knowledge

“Thus woman trusts in man down all the years and so, as always, is betrayed.”

Michael Moorcock book The City in the Autumn Stars

Source: The City in the Autumn Stars (1986), Chapter 19 (p. 446)

“What good is a martyr, Captain Bastable? A martyr shows us the power of faith. But what if that faith is misinformed? While people believe in heroes and the magic power of an individual to save them from the human condition, they will never be free.”

Michael Moorcock book The Steel Tsar

Book 2, Chapter 8 “Revolutions” (p. 422)
The Steel Tsar (1981)

People , Faith

“You’re as worthless as one of that decrepit mob. Lucifer has rejected you. Now mankind rejects you. Have the good taste, Sir, to accept a fact!”

Michael Moorcock book The City in the Autumn Stars

Source: The City in the Autumn Stars (1986), Chapter 17 (p. 408)

“Indeed, to be a hero, forever at war, is to be in some ways always a child. The true challenge comes in making sense of one’s life, of imbuing it with purpose based on one’s own principles.”

Michael Moorcock

Epilogue (p. 687)
The Dragon in the Sword (1986)

Life , War , Way , Sense

“We are all guilty,” he said. “We are all innocent. Only when we accept responsibility for our own actions do we become free. And only when every one of us accepts their share of responsibility will the world become safe for us all.”

Michael Moorcock

Book 2, Chapter 8 “Revolutions” (p. 422)
Oswald Bastable, The Steel Tsar (1981)

World

“I realized I was fulfilling mankind’s greatest dream—to fly like a bird, as naturally and as joyously as if the air were our familiar habitat.”

Michael Moorcock book The Steel Tsar

Book 2, Chapter 8 “Revolutions” (p. 419)
The Steel Tsar (1981)

Dreams , Nature , Bird , Flying

“Socialists are always quarreling amongst themselves, because of the strong element of messianism in their creeds.”

Michael Moorcock book The Steel Tsar

Book 2, Chapter 2 “Back in Service” (p. 353)
The Steel Tsar (1981)

Strong

“Because I had sought to challenge Destiny, Destiny had taken vengeance.”

Michael Moorcock book Phoenix in Obsidian

Book 3 “Visions and Revelations” Chapter 5 “The Waking of the Sword” (p. 421)
Phoenix in Obsidian (1970)

“Man is a rationalizing beast, if not a rational one.”

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

Source: The War Hound and the World's Pain (1981), Chapter 14 (p. 142)

“I watched him while he moved about in the nearby spinney below, bending and straightening, shaking snow from the sticks he found, and for some reason was reminded of the parable of Abraham and his son. Why should one serve a God who demanded such insane loyalty, who demanded that one deny the very humanity He was said to have created?”

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

Source: The War Hound and the World's Pain (1981), Chapter 8 (p. 92)

God , Loyalty

“But now the Mob’s passing whim had become the only law, as Robespierre himself would soon discover. I felt cruelly betrayed: by the Revolution, by men I had embraced as brothers, by Circumstance, and, as always, by God.”

Michael Moorcock book The City in the Autumn Stars

Source: The City in the Autumn Stars (1986), Chapter 1 (p. 177)

Men , God , Law

““For years my lady made her plans. And when the time came to put them into action, how wonderfully she was able to achieve her ambitions.”
“Only because few rational people can ever begin to understand such a lust for power,” said von Bek feelingly. “There is nothing more puerile than the mind of a tyrant.””

Michael Moorcock

Book 3, Chapter 1 (p. 629)
The Dragon in the Sword (1986)

People , Understanding , Time

“I felt sorry for him at that moment. He only wanted what every man wanted—freedom from fear, a chance to raise children with a reasonable certainty that they would be allowed to do the same, a chance to look forward to the future without the knowledge that any plans made might be wrecked forever by some sudden act of violence.”

Michael Moorcock book The Eternal Champion

Source: The Eternal Champion (1970), Chapter 3 “The Eldren Threat” (p. 15)

Children , Fear , Knowledge , Freedom

“It’s what they call a “theocracy”—priest-ridden in the extreme, full of dark superstitions and darker myths and legends, where all gods and demons are honoured, doubtless to be on the safe side. The people are cruel, ignorant, dirty and proud—they look down their noses at all other races.”

Michael Moorcock

Book 1, Chapter 2 “The Temple at Teku Benga” (p. 14)
The Warlord of the Air (1971)

God , People

“Violence creates nothing but violence, no matter what we call it and what the excuse. And so it goes, down all the centuries.”

Michael Moorcock book The Steel Tsar

Book 2, Chapter 8 “Revolutions” (p. 423)
The Steel Tsar (1981)

“The marvelous is of necessity a lie, a distortion. At best it is a metaphor which leads to the truth. I think that I know what causes the World’s Pain, lady. Or at least I think I know what contributes to that Pain.”
“And what would that be, Ulrich von Bek?”
“By telling a single lie to oneself or to another, by denying a single fact of the world as it has been created, one adds to the World’s Pain. And pain, lady, creates pain. And one must not seek to become saint or sinner, God or Devil. One must seek to become human and to love the fact of one’s humanity.”
I became embarrassed. “That is all I have learned, lady.”

Michael Moorcock

“It is all that Heaven demands,” she said.
Source: The von Bek family, The War Hound and the World's Pain (1981), Chapter 16 (p. 158)

Love , God , Pain , Truth

“It’s in the nature of a good despot to say anything that will convince someone to do as he wishes. Only when he does not need them does he really say what he thinks. And by that time, of course, because he has no need of them, they are usually as good as dead. The secret of becoming a successful tyrant lies in an early ability to be all things to all people.”

Michael Moorcock book The Steel Tsar

Book 2, Chapter 7 “A Mechanical Man” (p. 397)
The Steel Tsar (1981)

People , Secret , Nature , Thinking

“Destiny’s Champion,
Fate’s fool.
Eternity’s Soldier,
Time’s Tool.”

Michael Moorcock book Phoenix in Obsidian

Book 3 “Visions and Revelations” Epigram (p. 394)
Phoenix in Obsidian (1970)

Fate , Fools , Time

“I guessed he experienced the terrible confusion of a true solipsist when the outer world impinges.”

Michael Moorcock book The City in the Autumn Stars

Source: The City in the Autumn Stars (1986), Chapter 13 (p. 357)

World

“Violent men believe only in such concepts as ‘weakness’ and ‘cowardice’. They are so deeply cynical, so rooted in their own insane beliefs, that they cannot even begin to grasp the concept of ‘pacifism’.”

Michael Moorcock

Book 1, Chapter 6 “A Haven of Civilization” (p. 214)
Oswald Bastable, The Land Leviathan (1974)

Men

“I pray, in short, that God exists, that Lucifer brings about His own Redemption and that mankind therefore shall in time be free of them both forever: for until Man makes his own justice according to his own experience, he will never know what true peace can be.”

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

Source: The War Hound and the World's Pain (1981), Chapter 18 (p. 168)

God , Peace , Justice , Time

“That evening I lit many candles and sat in the library wearing fresh linen and drinking good wine while I read a treatise on astronomy by a student of Kepler’s and reflected on my increasing disagreement with Luther, who had judged reason to be the chief enemy of Faith, of the purity of his beliefs. He had considered reason a harlot, willing to turn to anyone’s needs, but this merely displayed his own suspicion of logic. I have come to believe him the madman Catholics described him as. Most mad people see logic as a threat to the dream in which they would rather live, a threat to their attempts to make the dream reality (usually through force, through threat, through manipulation and through bloodshed). It is why men of reason are so often the first to be killed or exiled by tyrants.”

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

Source: The War Hound and the World's Pain (1981), Chapter 1 (pp. 11-12)

Men , People , Faith , Dreams

“I would waste my rhetoric if I tried, for men are greedy and will not see the truth for the gleam of coin.”

Michael Moorcock book The Mad God's Amulet

Book 1, Chapter 5 “The Machine” (p. 160)
The Mad God's Amulet (1968)

Men , Truth

““Could you punish a heretic?”
“Madam, I do not know what a heretic really is. The word is made much of, these days. It seems to describe anyone you wish dead.””

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

Source: The War Hound and the World's Pain (1981), Chapter 2 (p. 27)

Dead

“Every court must have its fool, every great ideal must attract some who are motivated only by self-interest.”

Michael Moorcock book The Runestaff

Book 1, Chapter 7 “A Well-Known Traveler” (p. 413)
The Runestaff (1969)

Fools , Motivation

“You are martyred, as woman is ever martyred, particularly if she seeks her own power.”

Michael Moorcock book The City in the Autumn Stars

Source: The City in the Autumn Stars (1986), Chapter 19 (p. 446)

“Often people fight hardest of all to preserve a delusion. And they will frequently persecute those who challenge that delusion.”

Michael Moorcock

Book 2, Chapter 4 (p. 559)
The Dragon in the Sword (1986)

People , Fight

“We’ll build a world where Order shall prevail. A few more deaths are inconsequential, surely, if they guarantee us eternal life and absolute fulfillment?”

Michael Moorcock book The City in the Autumn Stars

Source: The City in the Autumn Stars (1986), Chapter 14 (p. 376)

Life , Death , World

“You may be abandoned by Satan, Sir, and I abandoned by God, but that does not put us in the same cart, nor even upon the same road.”

Michael Moorcock book The City in the Autumn Stars

Source: The City in the Autumn Stars (1986), Chapter 17 (p. 406)

God

““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.” 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.””

Michael Moorcock book The Steel Tsar

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

God , People , Religion , Way

“Despair leads to many forms of thought,” said the magus, “and many kinds of action. Despair drives some to greater sanity, towards an analysis of the world as it is and what it might be. Others it drives to deep and dangerous insanity, towards an imposition of their own desires upon reality. I sympathize with your despair, Johannes Klosterheim, because it has no solace, in the end. Your despair is the worst there is to know. And yet men often look upon the likes of you and envy you, as you doubtless envy Duke Arioch, as Duke Arioch doubtless envies his master Lucifer, whom he would betray, and perhaps as Lucifer envied God. And what does God envy, I wonder? Perhaps he envies the simple mortal who is content with his lot and envies nobody.”

Michael Moorcock

Source: The von Bek family, The War Hound and the World's Pain (1981), Chapter 15 (p. 153)

Men , God , World , Reality

“Scholarly men were suspect in my town. Women could not admit to scholarship at all. Men are afraid of two things in this world, it seems—women and knowledge. Both threaten their power, eh?”

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

Source: The War Hound and the World's Pain (1981), Chapter 2 (p. 31)

Women , Men , World , Knowledge

“Are you aware we anticipate the Apocalypse, von Bek?”

Michael Moorcock

“The obsession’s common enough, Montsorbier, amongst ignorant folk.”
Source: The von Bek family, The City in the Autumn Stars (1986), Chapter 14 (p. 377)

“I understand you now. But surely, if Lucifer is successful, we shall all be saved.”

Michael Moorcock

The Wildgrave’s smile was bitter. “What logic provides you with that hope, von Bek? If God is merciful, He provides us with little evidence.”
Source: The von Bek family, The War Hound and the World's Pain (1981), Chapter 6 (p. 79)

Understanding , Success

“Only Law could create such perfection and, Elric thought, such perfection defeated progress. That the twin forces complemented one another was now plainer than ever before, and for either to gain complete ascendancy over the other meant entropy or stagnation for the cosmos. Even though Law might dominate the Earth, Chaos must be present, and vice versa.”

Michael Moorcock

Book 4, Chapter 2 “Dark Revelations” (p. 582)
The Elric Cycle, Stormbringer (1965)

Perfection , Law

“Regret is useless since it can achieve nothing.”

Michael Moorcock

Book 4, “Doomed Lord’s Passing,” Chapter 1 “When the Sun Stopped” (p. 577)
The Elric Cycle, Stormbringer (1965)

“Are the gods mad or are they so subtle we cannot fathom the workings of their minds?”

Michael Moorcock

Source: Book 3, Chapter 4 “What the Sea God Said” (p. 554), The Elric Cycle, Stormbringer (1965)

God , Madness