Michael Moorcock Quotes

I understand you now. But surely, if Lucifer is successful, we shall all be saved."
The Wildgrave's smile was bitter. "What logic provides you with that hope, von Bek? If God is merciful, He provides us with little evidence.

I had always claimed to welcome the truth; yet now, in common with most of us, I was resentful of the truth because it called upon me to take an unwelcome course of action.

I said: “Then in reality I had little choice.”
“Let us say that your character has already determined your choice.”

“In Hell you become what you fear yourself to be. In Heaven you may become what you hope yourself to be,” said Lucifer.

Scholarly men were suspect in my town. Women could not admit to scholarship at all. Men are afraid of two things in this world, it seems—women and knowledge. Both threaten their power, eh?

Could you punish a heretic?"
"Madam, I do not know what a heretic really is. The word is made much of, these days. It seems to describe anyone you wish dead.

One can act too much in the cause of self-preservation and experience nothing fresh as a result.

That evening I lit many candles and sat in the library wearing fresh linen and drinking good wine while I read a treatise on astronomy by a student of Kepler’s and reflected on my increasing disagreement with Luther, who had judged reason to be the chief enemy of Faith, of the purity of his beliefs. He had considered reason a harlot, willing to turn to anyone’s needs, but this merely displayed his own suspicion of logic. I have come to believe him the madman Catholics described him as. Most mad people see logic as a threat to the dream in which they would rather live, a threat to their attempts to make the dream reality (usually through force, through threat, through manipulation and through bloodshed). It is why men of reason are so often the first to be killed or exiled by tyrants.

Only Law could create such perfection and, Elric thought, such perfection defeated progress. That the twin forces complemented one another was now plainer than ever before, and for either to gain complete ascendancy over the other meant entropy or stagnation for the cosmos. Even though Law might dominate the Earth, Chaos must be present, and vice versa.

Regret is useless since it can achieve nothing.

Are the gods mad or are they so subtle we cannot fathom the workings of their minds?

Elric knew that in reality Chaos was the harbinger of stagnation, for though it changed constantly, it never progressed.

A man who can’t forget the past is a man who cannot plan for the future.

Why do we worship such a god when whim decides him so often?

Thanks," said Elric, "and what did you give in the first place for the power to summon such a demon?"
"Why, my soul, of course. But it was an old one and not of much worth. Hell could be no worse than this existence.