Michael Moorcock Quotes

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!

I stared at the water and saw the clouds reflected in it, saw them break to reveal the moon. It was the same moon I had known as John Daker. The same bland face could be made out staring down in contentment at the antics of the creatures of the planet it circled. How many disasters had that moon witnessed? How many foolish crusades? How many wars and battles and murders?

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.

The Dead God’s Book and the Golden Barge are one and the same. They have no real existence, save in the wishful imagination of mankind. There is, the story says, no Holy Grail which will transform a man overnight from bewildered ignorance to complete knowledge—the answer already is within him, if he cares to train himself to find it. A rather overemphasised fact, throughout history, but one generally ignored all the same.

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.”

Her face was now a mask of moral outrage. “You talk of fashion while I speak of morality.”
It was true that Jerry had never been able to see much of a difference between the two.

I must admit, sir, that I have modified the verses a little, to allow for the new things I have learned, so I am an unreliable source of truth, sir, save in its most fundamental sense. Like a majority of poets, sir.

My bargain with God included the undertaking that I should play no direct part, merely supervise mankind’s self-redemption. Like yourself, my agents are those whose independence of thought is already well-established.

Better wicked Lucifer for a master, thought I, than a pious Tyrant!

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

How will the doctor fare?" Corum called. "The one who took me in."
"He will die unless he is clever and denounces you," Jhary told him.
"But he was a man of great intelligence and humanity. A man of science, too—of learning."
"All the more reason for killing him, if their priesthood has its way. Superstition, not learning, is respected here.

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

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.

As I believe I observed earlier," said the albino prince to the still-cowed Gaynor, "the most powerful of beings are not necessarily the most intelligent, nor, indeed, sane, nor well-mannered. The more one knows of the gods, the more one learns this fundamental lesson...

Chaos delights in creation but swiftly becomes bored with what it creates for it seeks not order or justice or constancy but sensation, entertainment. Sometimes it suits it to create something which you and I would value or find pleasure in. But it is an accident.