You desire power only for that most selfish of all ends, and therefore you know no boundaries in the seeking and the gaining of it. - Michael Moorcock

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

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

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.