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Michael Moorcock
303 quotes
“Destiny’s Champion, Fate’s fool. Eternity’s Soldier, Time’s Tool.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I would be grateful if I was allowed to work out my own destiny for once,” I said. “For good or ill.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Because I had sought to challenge Destiny, Destiny had taken vengeance.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Time is at once an agony of the Present, a long torment of the Past and the terrible prospect of countless Futures. Time is also a complex of subtly intersecting realities, of unguessable consequences and undiscoverable causes, of profound tensions and dependencies.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How true it is when they say there is nothing which makes a man more furious than the discovery that he has deceived himself!”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Evil flourishes best in disguise,” said Otto grimly. His companions nodded in assent. “And the best disguise is simple” said the youth, Federit Shaus. “Honest patriotism. Joyful idealism.” “You’re a cynic, lad,” von Bek smiled at him. “But sadly my own experience would support your view. Show me a man who cries ‘my country right or wrong’, and I’ll show you one who’d cheerfully murder half his own nation in the name of patriotism.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Women are always underestimated by men,” said Alisaard, a note of satisfaction in her voice, “and this enables them sometimes to gather far more power to themselves than the men suspect.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Often people fight hardest of all to preserve a delusion. And they will frequently persecute those who challenge that delusion.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Your imagination is notoriously poor. Not everyone holds identical ambitions to your own!”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Her smile was all pride. I had seen many like her in the past. She believed herself cleverer than she was because it suited others to let her maintain that delusion.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“By acting as they would act, we become what they are. And if we are what they are, then there is little point in resisting them!”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Let us say that those who do insist on a hearing will be silenced soon enough. There is a monotonous pattern to the rise of tyrants which, I suppose, is reflected in the general pattern of human folly. Depressing though it is, we must accept the fact.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They’re Mabden, of course. They are afraid of the city. Afraid of almost everything. And being permitted no weapons with which they can attack what they fear, they are reduced to what you see. It seems the Mabden can only kill or run away. Their brains are of no use to them.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Knowledge ceases to be wisdom when one has no method for making sense or use of what one learns.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She is in other words a classic demagogue,” said von Bek...“It was Hitler’s secret that he could seem one thing to one group and an entirely different thing to another. That is how they rise so swiftly to power. These creatures are bizarre. They can virtually change shape and colour. They have an amophous quality and yet at the same time they have a will to dominate others which is unrelenting, almost their only consistent trait, their only reality.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I at least had some knowledge of the warping, mutating power of the Lords of Disorder, the supernatural entities who on John Daker’s Earth would be called Arch-Demons, the Dukes of Hell. I knew that they made use of our most treasured virtues and most honoured emotions. That they were capable of almost any illusion. And that all that was keeping them from pouring forth from their stronghold to engulf so many other Realms of the multiverse was their caution, their unreadiness or unwillingness to war against the rival power of Law. But if we humans invited them to our realms, they would come.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Chaos has her moods and whims, that’s all. As I told you, she cannot remain stable. It is in her nature to be forever changing.” “While it is in the nature of Law,” Alisaard explained, “to be forever fixed. The Balance is there to ensure that neither Law nor Chaos ever gain complete ascendancy, for the one offers sterility while the other offers only sensation.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For years my lady made her plans. And when the time came to put them into action, how wonderfully she was able to achieve her ambitions.” “Only because few rational people can ever begin to understand such a lust for power,” said von Bek feelingly. “There is nothing more puerile than the mind of a tyrant.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I could scarcely believe that these were the men who had done so much to influence the course of my own world’s history. It now seemed obvious that all of them were drugged in some way. They were acting like silly children. And yet I suppose I should have realized that it is in the nature of all such creatures to be at heart infantile. Only children believe they can achieve enormous power over the world without paying a price for that power. And the price so often is the sanity of the one who seeks it.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How paltry is the thing they call science. We have something far superior! We have Faith. We have a Force greater than Reason! We have a wisdom beyond mere knowledge. We have the Holy Grail itself. The Chalice of Limitless Power!”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There could be an end to all this, when the Lords of the Higher Worlds and all the machinery of cosmic mystery shall be no more. And perhaps that is why they fear mortals so much. The secret of their destruction, I suspect, lies in us, though we have yet to realize our own power.” “And do you have a hint of what that power may be, Eternal Champion?” said Alisaard. I smiled. “I think it is simply the power to conceive of a multiverse which has no need of the supernatural, which, indeed, could abolish it if so desired!”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I looked down at her shriveled corpse. It lay across that of her brother. One had represented the evil of the world, the other the good. Yet both had been defeated by pride, by ambition, by a promise of immortality.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Indeed, to be a hero, forever at war, is to be in some ways always a child. The true challenge comes in making sense of one’s life, of imbuing it with purpose based on one’s own principles.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The sentient may perceive and love the universe, but the universe cannot perceive and love the sentient.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This is an Age of Gods, I am afraid, Master Corum. There are many, big and small, and they crowd the universe. Once it was not so. Sometimes, I suspect, the universe manages with none at all!”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And then the full injustice of his fate struck him. Arioch bore no malice towards the Vadhagh. He cared for them no more or less than he cared for the Mabden parasites feeding off his body. He was merely wiping his palette clean of old colours as a painter will before he begins a fresh canvas. All the agony and the misery he and his had suffered was on behalf of the whim of a careless god who only occasionally turned his attention to the world that he had been given to rule.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Everything may exist for a short while—even justice. But the true state of the universe is anarchy. It is the mortal’s tragedy that he can never accept this.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is your capacity for love that makes you strong, Prince Corum.” “And my capacity for hate?” “That directs your strength.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It has often been noted that gods could not exist without mortals and mortals could not exist without gods.” “Yet gods, it appears,” said Corum, “can affect our destinies.” “And we can affect theirs, can we not?”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Such speculation leads us nowhere and everywhere, but it makes no difference to our understanding of our immediate problems.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are content here. None starves or goes in need of anything. There was no reason for the unrest. So we are victims of powers beyond our control, are we? I like not that—whether it be Law or Chaos. I would prefer to remain neutral…” “Aye,” said Jhary-a-Conel. “Any thinking man does in these conflicts. Yet there are times when sides must be taken lest all that one loves is destroyed. I have never known another answer to the problem, though the taking of an extreme position will always make a man lose something of his humanity.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Ultimately, Chaos brings a more profound stagnation than anything it despises in law. It must forever seek more and more sensation, more and more empty marvels, until there is nothing left and it has forgotten what true invention is.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I could come to hate all gods,” he said. “IT WOULD BE YOUR RIGHT. WE MUST USE MORTALS FOR ENDS WE CANNOT OURSELVES ACHIEVE.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Chaos delights in creation but swiftly becomes bored with what it creates for it seeks not order or justice or constancy but sensation, entertainment. Sometimes it suits it to create something which you and I would value or find pleasure in. But it is an accident.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It becomes so easy to believe what one wishes to believe,” Jhary said wearily. “So easy.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How will the doctor fare?” Corum called. “The one who took me in.” “He will die unless he is clever and denounces you,” Jhary told him. “But he was a man of great intelligence and humanity. A man of science, too—of learning.” “All the more reason for killing him, if their priesthood has its way. Superstition, not learning, is respected here.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You think we are in danger there?” “Danger? It depends what you regard as dangerous. Some wisdom may be dangerous to one man and not to another.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Mortal, I make no bargains, I obey no laws save the one of which you have already learned. I care not for Law nor for Chaos nor for the Cosmic Balance. Kwll and Rhynn exist for the love of existence and nothing else and we do not concern ourselves with the illusory struggles of petty mortals and their pettier gods. Do you know that you dream of these gods—that you are stronger than they—that when you are fearful, why then you bring fearsome gods upon yourselves? Is this not evident to you?”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Mortals and gods come and go, but nature remains.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The man called himself a wizard, but Corum would have called him a philosopher, someone who enjoyed exploring and discovering the secrets of nature.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am dead,” said Corum, “and would be grateful if you would allow me to be dead in peace.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He wondered if, in achieving such a noble way of life, a people became automatically vulnerable to destruction by those who had not achieved it. If so, it was an irony of cosmic proportions.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Can we break such a law? If we do break our ancient laws, are our customs worth fighting for?”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The whole question of morality…” “Is as nothing when one’s stomach rumbles,” said Jhary.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What a great power women have,” he said. “I have recently been speaking with Ilbrec of magic, but the greatest magic of all is in the kiss of a woman.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We fight for our beliefs, Queen Medhbh,” said Amergin, “just as much as we fight for our lives. We must continue to conduct our affairs according to those beliefs. If we do not then we have no justification for living. Let us question these people fairly and listen to their answers before we judge them innocent or guilty.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Once such a strength of illusion is introduced into a world,” said Goffanon, “then it is hard to be rid of it. It will cloud the Mabden minds for many millennia to come. I know that I am right.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As I suggested to John Major (a British Prime Minister) when he told us that socialism was dead, he should not be too triumphant. After all, until his predecessor Mrs Thatcher revived it, we thought feudalism pretty much over and done with, too.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Paternalism and centralism, the bane of capitalist as well as socialist politics, are for me the permanent enemy of democracy.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It’s what they call a “theocracy”—priest-ridden in the extreme, full of dark superstitions and darker myths and legends, where all gods and demons are honoured, doubtless to be on the safe side. The people are cruel, ignorant, dirty and proud—they look down their noses at all other races.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source