Michael Moorcock Quotes

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.

She is in other words a classic demagogue," said von Bek..."It was Hitler's secret that he could seem one thing to one group and an entirely different thing to another. That is how they rise so swiftly to power. These creatures are bizarre. They can virtually change shape and colour. They have an amophous quality and yet at the same time they have a will to dominate others which is unrelenting, almost their only consistent trait, their only reality.

Knowledge ceases to be wisdom when one has no method for making sense or use of what one learns.

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.

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.

By acting as they would act, we become what they are. And if we are what they are, then there is little point in resisting them!

Her smile was all pride. I had seen many like her in the past. She believed herself cleverer than she was because it suited others to let her maintain that delusion.

Your imagination is notoriously poor. Not everyone holds identical ambitions to your own!

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

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.

Evil flourishes best in disguise," said Otto grimly. His companions nodded in assent.
"And the best disguise is simple" said the youth, Federit Shaus. "Honest patriotism. Joyful idealism."
"You're a cynic, lad," von Bek smiled at him. "But sadly my own experience would support your view. Show me a man who cries 'my country right or wrong', and I'll show you one who'd cheerfully murder half his own nation in the name of patriotism.

How true it is when they say there is nothing which makes a man more furious than the discovery that he has deceived himself!

Time is at once an agony of the Present, a long torment of the Past and the terrible prospect of countless Futures. Time is also a complex of subtly intersecting realities, of unguessable consequences and undiscoverable causes, of profound tensions and dependencies.

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

I would be grateful if I was allowed to work out my own destiny for once," I said. "For good or ill.