Michael Moorcock Quotes

There are subjects forbidden by good manners, it seems. As in many societies, I suppose, where the very fundamentals of their existence are the subject of the deepest taboos. What is this terror of reality, I wonder, which plagues the human spirit?

The barbarians don’t come from outside the walls any more, do they?

Destiny can contain a few extra threads in her design and still accomplish her original aims.

And upon those three lies was Elric’s destiny to be built, for it is only about things which concern us most profoundly that we lie clearly and with profound conviction.

Like most fanatics," I pointed out coolly, "you share at least one characteristic with children—you want everything now. All improvements take time. You cannot make the world perfect overnight. Things are considerably better for more people today than they were in my—in the early years of this century, for instance.

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

Oh, I believe very much in cause and effect," she said, "but not in the linear sense. Every action has a proliferation of consequences. We can't remain alive without being responsible for thousands of actions and their consequences. We simply have to live with that fact and decide, morally if you like, how to formulate a civilized, secure environment for ourselves. So far we haven't succeeded.

It has often been noted that gods could not exist without mortals and mortals could not exist without gods."
"Yet gods, it appears," said Corum, "can affect our destinies."
"And we can affect theirs, can we not?

My own self-deception at least promised some kind of pleasure. Theirs offered nothing but terror and guilt.

One by one, with appalling deliberation, the villages of the Gypsy Nation crawl to the edge and plunge into the abyss.
To stop is obscene. They do not know how to stop. They can only die.
Elric, too, is screaming now, as he forces his horse forward. But he screams, he knows, at the apparent inevitability of human folly, of people who can destroy themselves to honour a principle and a habit that has long since ceased to have any practical function. They are dying because they would rather follow habit than alter their course.

Men may trust men, Prince Elric, but perhaps we'll never have a truly sane world until men learn to trust mankind. That would mean the death of magic, I think.

Here the idea of God has been replaced by the idea of the Future. The two notions are, admittedly, all but identical in the way in which they are self-contradictory and thus always fundamentally confusing to their worshippers, who must look to priests for translation, and so inevitably the priests (or whatever they call them) gradually take power...

We are content here. None starves or goes in need of anything. There was no reason for the unrest. So we are victims of powers beyond our control, are we? I like not that—whether it be Law or Chaos. I would prefer to remain neutral…"
"Aye," said Jhary-a-Conel. "Any thinking man does in these conflicts. Yet there are times when sides must be taken lest all that one loves is destroyed. I have never known another answer to the problem, though the taking of an extreme position will always make a man lose something of his humanity.

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.

Mortals and gods come and go, but nature remains.