The man is a relic, gentlemen, from an age most of us have only read about. He would have us judged by our wealth and our martial glory rather than o… - Michael Moorcock

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.

My own self-deception at least promised some kind of pleasure. Theirs offered nothing but terror and guilt.

One by one, with appalling deliberation, the villages of the Gypsy Nation crawl to the edge and plunge into the abyss.
To stop is obscene. They do not know how to stop. They can only die.
Elric, too, is screaming now, as he forces his horse forward. But he screams, he knows, at the apparent inevitability of human folly, of people who can destroy themselves to honour a principle and a habit that has long since ceased to have any practical function. They are dying because they would rather follow habit than alter their course.