Michael Moorcock: Doing

““So you are still our Master,” said Sabrina. She was frowning. She had come to be afraid again.
“Not so!” Lucifer turned, almost in rage. “You are your own masters. Your destiny is yours. Your lives are your own. Do you not see that this means an end to the miraculous? You are at the beginning of a new age for Man, an age of investigation and analysis.”
“The Age of Lucifer,” I said, echoing some of His own irony.
He saw the joke in it. He smiled.
“Man, whether he be Christian or pagan, must lean to rule himself, to understand himself, to take responsibility for himself. There can be no Armageddon now. If Man is destroyed, he shall have destroyed himself.”
“So we are to live without aid,” said Sabrina. Her face was clearing.
“And without hindrance,” said Lucifer. “It will be your fellows, your children and their children who will find the Cure for the World’s Pain.”
“Or perish in the attempt,” said I.
“It is a fair risk,” said Lucifer. “And you must remember, von Bek, that it is in my interest that you succeed. I have wisdom and knowledge at your disposal. I always had that gift for Man. And now that I may give it freely I choose not to do so. Each fragment of wisdom shall be earned. And it shall be hard-earned, captain.””

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

Source: The War Hound and the World's Pain (1981), Chapter 18 (p. 166)

Wisdom , Pain , Children , Age

“The soldier shook his head, waxing philosophical. “It’s a madness, sir. We’ve all got it. It could go on until the last human being crawls away from the body of the chap he’s just bashed to bits with a stone. That’s what war is, sir—madness. You don’t think about what you’re doing. You forget, don’t you—you just go on killing and killing.””

Michael Moorcock book The Land Leviathan

Book 1, Chapter 2 “The Dream—and the Nightmare—of the Chilean Wizard” (p. 187)
The Land Leviathan (1974)

War , Thinking , Madness , Forgetting

“Warlocks and witches debate to determine how to make their broomsticks fly again. But how shall they ever come together in strength? Even if your ideas had any truth, they’re so frequently, by their very character, at odds. Each claims to hold the key to the only wisdom. That’s where natural philosophers, who do not impose what they need to believe (or at least not so readily!) upon the world, but analyze what they see, have the strong advantage.”

Michael Moorcock book The City in the Autumn Stars

Source: The City in the Autumn Stars (1986), Chapter 9 (p. 310)

Wisdom , Truth , World , Idea

“But we are all victims, Captain Bastable, just as in other ways we are all aggressors. At root we are victims to the comforting lies we tell ourselves, of our willingness to shift moral responsibility onto leaders, organized religion—onto a deity or a race, if all else fails. Onto God, onto politicians, onto creatures from other planets. It is always the same impulse, to refuse responsibility. If we do not take responsibility for our own actions, ultimately we perish.”

Michael Moorcock book The Steel Tsar

Book 2, Chapter 7 “A Mechanical Man” (p. 395)
The Steel Tsar (1981)

God , Religion , Way

““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.”
“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!””

Michael Moorcock

Book 3, Chapter 2 (p. 646)
The Dragon in the Sword (1986)

Secret , World , Fear , Smile

“Nothing is known for certain, Isarda. All knowledge is illusion—purpose is a meaningless word, a mere sound, a reassuring fragment of melody in a cacophony of clashing chords. All is flux—matter is like these jewels. (She throws a handful of gleaming gems upon the golden surface; they scatter. When the last jewel has ceased to move, she looks up at him.) Sometimes they fall into a rough pattern, usually they do not. So as this moment, a pattern has been formed—you and I stand here speaking. But at any moment that which constitutes our beings may be scattered again.”

Michael Moorcock book Phoenix in Obsidian

Prologue (p. 321)
Phoenix in Obsidian (1970)

Knowledge

“He’s vain. His vanity’s hurt by the world’s refusal to accept his remedies and become immediately Enlightened. And what does a vain man do when insulted, Sir?”…“He lashes out, Sir,” says I. “He seeks to portion blame. He fumes, Sir. He attacks. In the case before us, such is his despotic power, he kills. He kills, Sir. He wars on other nations. Mary’s blood, Sir, but this poor sphere of ours suffers more from the single, frustrated egoist than from any natural—or supernatural—misery. Your own Church’s history, Sir, illustrates my point well enough, eh? We are too frequently in the power of mad children, who rage and stamp and break Kingdoms as they break toys. They order thousands of deaths a day as if they were spoiled brats kicking at their dolls!”

Michael Moorcock

Source: The von Bek family, The City in the Autumn Stars (1986), Chapter 2 (pp. 197-198; ellipsis represents a minor elision of description)

Death , War , Children , World

“You were both catalysts,” Mrs Persson told me, “no more than that. Do you still not realize your error? No individual can claim so much personal guilt. It is madness to do so. We are all guilty of supporting the circumstances, the self-deceptions, the misconceptions and misinformation which lead to War. Every lie we tell ourselves brings an evil like the destruction of Hiroshima closer. We drown in our lies.”

Michael Moorcock

Book 2, Chapter 7 “A Mechanical Man” (p. 394)
Oswald Bastable, The Steel Tsar (1981)

War , Lie , Error , Support

“Let us say that those who do insist on a hearing will be silenced soon enough. There is a monotonous pattern to the rise of tyrants which, I suppose, is reflected in the general pattern of human folly. Depressing though it is, we must accept the fact.”

Michael Moorcock

Book 2, Chapter 5 (p. 568)
The Dragon in the Sword (1986)

Silence

“When he was dead I raised myself to my feet and I looked about me. Everything was still. A loneliness had come upon my soul.
There was darkness everywhere now but in the forest. And even here there were wisps of grey, as if evil crept in.
I lifted my head to the sky and I shook my fist. “Oh, I reject you. I reject your Heaven and I reject your Hell. Do as you wish with me, but know that your desires are petty and your ambitions have no meaning!””

Michael Moorcock

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)

Soul , Hell , Universe , Evil

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

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)

Life

““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.””

Michael Moorcock book The Sword of the Dawn

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

Thinking

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

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)

Time

“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.”

Michael Moorcock book The City in the Autumn Stars

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

“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 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 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

““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

“Why do we worship such a god when whim decides him so often?”

Michael Moorcock

Book 1, Chapter 4 “Of Living Swords and Dead Gods” (p. 463)
The Elric Cycle, Stormbringer (1965)

God

“I do not know. That is the only real truth, Shaarilla. I do not know.”

Michael Moorcock

Source: The Elric Cycle, The Weird of the White Wolf (1977), Chapter 1, “A Woman Who Would Risk Grief to Her Soul” (p. 452)

Truth