Michael Moorcock Quotes

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.

An ethic is simply a system of survival," Velusi said. "What does an ethic mean when there is no chance of survival?

I must believe you doomed to eternal life, but also to eternal repetition! Your true doom is simple to me. You lack brains, Sir.

But regret was useless now, so he forgot it.

Their glory in earthly power had brought them to decadent ruin, as it brought down all empires who gloried in gold or conquest or those other ambitions which can never be satisfied but must forever be fed.

It's never 'should' with engineers, my old friend, but 'how'? Have you not learned that much?

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

My instinct shouted “Conspiracy” but my head reasoned “Coincidence”.

It had been some years since I had lost my Faith, save in my own capacity to survive a world at War, but evidently in the back of my mind there had always been some sense that through God one might find salvation. Now, as I journeyed in quest of the Holy Grail (or something identified as the Holy Grail), I not only questioned the possibility that salvation existed; I questioned whether God’s salvation was worth the earning. Again I began to see the struggle between God and Lucifer as nothing more than a squabble between petty princelings over who should possess power in a tiny, unimportant territory. The fate of the tenants of that territory did not much seem to matter to them; and even the reward of those tenants’ loyalty seemed thin enough to me.

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.

“We are fated,” he said. “We have little free will, for all we deceive ourselves otherwise. If we perish or live through this venture, it will not count for much in the overall scheme of things.

Everything may exist for a short while—even justice. But the true state of the universe is anarchy. It is the mortal’s tragedy that he can never accept this.

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.

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

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.