Michael Moorcock Quotes

Magic, as far as Faustaff knew, rejected reason. Religion accepted it, of course, but hardly encouraged it. Only science accepted it and encouraged it. Faustaff suddenly saw mankind’s social and psychological evolution in a clear, simple light. Science alone accepted man as he was and sought to exploit his full potential.

Orelli smiled to himself. It was a wickedly introspective smile as if he looked into his own soul and was pleased with the evil he found there.

Is that what you are? An android?"
"You could find out if you made love to me."
Faustaff smiled and shook his head. "Sweetheart, you're just not my type."
"I thought any young woman was your type, doctor."
"So did I till I met you.

Everything dies eventually—but that shouldn’t stop us enjoying life while it is there to be enjoyed.

I have never had trouble with conflicting interpretations of my work. Once the story is published, it belongs to the reader.

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

Fear was back and with it the old terrors, the old mental aberrations, the old superstitions, the old religions. He knew the pattern. He had studied it in the text books. He knew how little power rational argument had when faced with minds turned sick by fear. He knew how quickly a cult of the kind he had seen could proliferate and dominate a society and then split internally and become several warring sects.

The society was the nearest thing to perfection that had ever existed; vital without being violent, stable without being stagnant. This society had resulted from a number of factors, the most important being a small population served by a sophisticated technology and an equally sophisticated administrative system. The arts were alive, there was universal literacy, the philosophies flourished.

Alain left the cell, left Police Headquarters and stood for a long time by a splashing fountain, staring into the clear water and watching the darting goldfish swimming in the narrow confines of the pool. Did they understand just how narrow their little universe was? he wondered. They seemed happy enough, if fish could be happy. But if they weren’t happy, he reflected, neither were they sad. They had no tradition but instinct, no ritual but the quest for food and a mate. He didn’t envy them much.

Listening to the conversation, his faith in the stupidity of human nature was fully restored.

Why ascribe meaning to all this? The further away from the fundamentals of life we go, the more we quest for their meaning. There is no meaning. It is here. It has always been here in some state. It will always be here. That is all we can ever truly know. It is all we should want to know.

A threat to free speech. It was marvelous how they accepted the principles of democracy and rejected them at the same time by talk of mob action!

Any forthcoming dispute was likely to be a battle between ignorance of one sort and ignorance of another.

Perhaps he was old and wise, perhaps he was just old.

He existed in all the many dimensions of the multiverse. Yet he, in common with all others, was bound by the dimension of Time. He had cast off the chains of space but was tied, as perhaps all denizens of the multiverse would always be, by the imperturbable prowl of Time, which brooked no halt, which condoned no tampering with its movement, whether to slow it or to speed it.
Time, the changer, could not be changed. Space, perhaps, the material environment, could be conquered. Time, never.