Michael Moorcock Quotes

They blinded themselves to the obvious. That is the great triumph of mindless need over intelligence and the human spirit.

He gasped as he stepped forward to peer at them, observing living faces, eyes which were undying, lips frozen in expressions of terror, of anguish, of misery. They were like so many flies in amber.
“That’s the unchanging past, Prince Elric,” said Oone. “That’s the fate of those who seek to reclaim their lost beliefs without first experiencing the search for new ones.”

We have a scanty notion of justice and the obligations of rule involve little more than inventing new terrors by which we may cow and control others. Power, I think, is a habit as terrible as the potion I must now sip in order to sustain myself. It feeds upon itself. It is a hungry beast, devouring those who would possess it and those who hate it—devouring even those who own it.

We set high store by prophecies here in the desert. It seems that our longing for help might have coloured our reason.

This was Elric’s dream, more coherent now than it had ever been. This was his dream and it was why he traveled the world, why he refused the power which was his, why he risked his life, his mind, his love and everything else he valued, for he believed that there was no life worth living that was not risked in pursuit of knowledge and justice. And this was why his fellow countrymen feared him. Justice was not obtained, he believed, by administration but by experience. One must know what it was to suffer humiliation and powerlessness; at least to some degree, before one could entirely appreciate its effect. One must give up power if one was to achieve true justice. This was not the logic of Empire, but it was the logic of one who truly loved the world and desired to see an age dawn when all people would be free to pursue their ambitions in dignity and self-respect.

Here information and philosophies were exchanged, together with all manner of goods. This was a court whose energies were not devoted to maintaining itself unchanged for eternity, but to every kind of new idea and lively, humane discussion, which welcomed fresh thought not as a threat to its existence but as a very necessity to its continued well-being, whose wealth was devoted to experiment in the arts and sciences, to supporting those who were needy, to aiding thinkers and scholars. The Bright Empire’s brightness would come no longer from the glow of putrefaction but from the light of reason and good will.

If your people spent less time maintaining their own devalued myths about themselves and more upon studying the world as it is I think your city would have a greater chance of surviving. As it is, the place is crumbling beneath the weight of its own degraded fictions. The legends which offer a race their sense of pride and history eventually become putrid..."
"We are unconcerned with matters of philosophy," Manag Iss said with evident poor temper. "We do not question the motives or the ideas of those who employ us. That is written in our charters."
"And therefore must be obeyed!" Elric smiled. "Thus you celebrate your decadence and resist reality.

The albino reflected on the power of the human mind to build a fantasy and then defend it with complete determination as a reality.

It takes little intelligence to draw the obvious conclusion..."
"Especially if one is blessed with only the barest information concerning other lands and peoples.

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.

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

But regret was useless now, so he forgot it.

But beware of gods Elric. Beware of the Lords of the Higher Worlds and remember that their aid and their gifts must always be paid for.

Has Fate been thwarted?"
"Fate is never thwarted. What has happened has happened because Fate willed it thus—if, indeed, there is such a thing as Fate and if men's actions are not merely a response to other men's actions.

How the weak hate weakness.