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Michael Moorcock
303 quotes
“Like most fanatics,” I pointed out coolly, “you share at least one characteristic with children—you want everything now. All improvements take time. You cannot make the world perfect overnight. Things are considerably better for more people today than they were in my—in the early years of this century, for instance.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Tyrants hate original thinking.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The conqueror always assumes that his moral superiority—rather than his ferocious greed—is what has allowed him to triumph.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I was wondering what made a decent English army officer turn into a desperate revolutionist overnight,” I smiled. “It happens to many like that,” he said. “I have seen them. But you have to show them so much injustice first... Nobody wants to believe that the world is cruel—or that one’s own kind are cruel. Not to know cruelty is to remain innocent, eh? And we should all like to remain innocent. A revolutionist is a man who, perhaps, fails to keep his innocence but so desperately wants it back that he seeks to create a world where all shall be innocent in that way.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In an infinite universe, all may become real sooner or later. Yet it is always up to mankind to make real what it really wishes to be real.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The soldier shook his head, waxing philosophical. “It’s a madness, sir. We’ve all got it. It could go on until the last human being crawls away from the body of the chap he’s just bashed to bits with a stone. That’s what war is, sir—madness. You don’t think about what you’re doing. You forget, don’t you—you just go on killing and killing.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Violent men believe only in such concepts as ‘weakness’ and ‘cowardice’. They are so deeply cynical , so rooted in their own insane beliefs, that they cannot even begin to grasp the concept of ‘pacifism’.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is less danger, gentlemen, in living according to a set of high moral principles than most politicians believe.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You have no proof of this,” I said. “No. But a theory must be tested to be disproved, Mr Bastable.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is the spirit of Salem—the corrupting influence of Puritanism which in itself is perversion of the Stoic ideal—infecting what remains of a nation which could have set an example to the world.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It’s all a question of power and rarely a question of justice.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The captain seemed mad. Perhaps he did not enjoy his trade. Many soldiers did not, when real warfare developed.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I knew that it was human nature which lay at the root of History and that no matter where I found myself I was bound to discover superficial similarities expressing and exemplifying that nature. It was human idealism and human impatience and human despair which continued to produce these terrible wars. Human virtues and vices, mixed and confused in individuals, created what we called “History”. Yet I could see no way in which the vicious circle of aspiration and desperation might ever be broken. We were all victims of our own imagination.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To me politics is just a matter of getting the engineering right. If you have a machine which functions properly without much attention, then it’s obviously a good machine. That’s what politics should be about. And if the machine has simple working parts which any layman can understand, then it’s, as it were, your democratic machine. Am I right or am I wrong?” “Crazy,” said Makhno, and scratched his nose. “What?” “You’re not right or wrong. You’re crazy.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have learned from my experiences that hatred and racial antagonism can be manufactured by the politicians of any one country against any other, so I was no longer the patriot I had been.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Socialists are always quarreling amongst themselves, because of the strong element of messianism in their creeds.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are still ruled, in some ways, by our Church. We are a people more cursed by religion and its manifestations and assumptions than any other. The Steel Tsar, with his messianic socialism, offers us religion again, perhaps. You English have never had quite the same need for God. We have known despair and conquest too often to ignore Him altogether.” He shrugged. “Old habits, Mr Bastable. Religion is the panacea for defeat. We have a great tendency to rationalize our despair in mystical and utopian terms.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Petersburg socialism seems cold to the likes of our Cossacks, who would rather worship personalities than embrace ideas.” I shared his irony. “You make them sound like Americans.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Are you trying to talk peace terms?” “I’ve given that up,” said Makhno. “It doesn’t appear to work. You mention peace and everyone tries to shoot you or jail you.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Unlike so many politicians or military leaders they made no attempt to justify their mistakes, to cling to power. For them power held enormous responsibility and was merely invested in them temporarily.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Like so many fanatics, he possessed an appalling streak of timidity and terror which feared all that was not absolutely familiar. As his power increased, he would doubtless attempt to destroy anything that made him anxious.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I understood that it was only the very best in us, our capacity for love and self-respect, that enabled us to survive in a perpetually fragmenting multiverse. Only our deepest sense of justice allowed us to remain sane and relish the wonders of chaotic Time and Space, to be free at least of fear. Further violence would bring only an endless chain of bloodshed and an inevitable descent of our race into bestiality and ultimate insentience. To survive, we must love.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You were both catalysts,” Mrs Persson told me, “no more than that. Do you still not realize your error? No individual can claim so much personal guilt. It is madness to do so. We are all guilty of supporting the circumstances, the self-deceptions, the misconceptions and misinformation which lead to War. Every lie we tell ourselves brings an evil like the destruction of Hiroshima closer. We drown in our lies.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But we are all victims, Captain Bastable, just as in other ways we are all aggressors. At root we are victims to the comforting lies we tell ourselves, of our willingness to shift moral responsibility onto leaders, organized religion—onto a deity or a race, if all else fails. Onto God, onto politicians, onto creatures from other planets. It is always the same impulse, to refuse responsibility. If we do not take responsibility for our own actions, ultimately we perish.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It’s in the nature of a good despot to say anything that will convince someone to do as he wishes. Only when he does not need them does he really say what he thinks. And by that time, of course, because he has no need of them, they are usually as good as dead. The secret of becoming a successful tyrant lies in an early ability to be all things to all people.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Oh, I believe very much in cause and effect,” she said, “but not in the linear sense. Every action has a proliferation of consequences. We can’t remain alive without being responsible for thousands of actions and their consequences. We simply have to live with that fact and decide, morally if you like, how to formulate a civilized, secure environment for ourselves. So far we haven’t succeeded.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Here the idea of God has been replaced by the idea of the Future. The two notions are, admittedly, all but identical in the way in which they are self-contradictory and thus always fundamentally confusing to their worshippers, who must look to priests for translation, and so inevitably the priests (or whatever they call them) gradually take power...”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I realized I was fulfilling mankind’s greatest dream—to fly like a bird, as naturally and as joyously as if the air were our familiar habitat.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What good is a martyr, Captain Bastable? A martyr shows us the power of faith. But what if that faith is misinformed? While people believe in heroes and the magic power of an individual to save them from the human condition, they will never be free.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are all guilty,” he said. “We are all innocent. Only when we accept responsibility for our own actions do we become free. And only when every one of us accepts their share of responsibility will the world become safe for us all.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Violence creates nothing but violence, no matter what we call it and what the excuse. And so it goes, down all the centuries.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If he wished he could resurrect the Dragon Isle’s former might and rule both his own land and the Young Kingdoms as an invulnerable tyrant. But his reading has also taught him to question the uses to which power is put, to question his motives, to question whether his own power should be used at all, in any cause. His reading has led him to this “morality”, which, still, he barely understands.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How the weak hate weakness.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But regret was useless now, so he forgot it.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Destiny can contain a few extra threads in her design and still accomplish her original aims.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It takes little intelligence to draw the obvious conclusion...” “Especially if one is blessed with only the barest information concerning other lands and peoples.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The albino reflected on the power of the human mind to build a fantasy and then defend it with complete determination as a reality.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We set high store by prophecies here in the desert. It seems that our longing for help might have coloured our reason.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They blinded themselves to the obvious. That is the great triumph of mindless need over intelligence and the human spirit.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I now know that legends in themselves have no power. The power comes from the uses that the living make of the legend. The legends merely represent an ideal.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Fate is cruel, Oone. It would be better if it provided us with one unaltering path. Instead it forces us to make choices, never to know if those choices were for the best.” “We are mortals,” she said with a shrug. “That is our particular doom.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Everything you have done, my nobles, has been stupid. You have been cruel, greedy, careless of others’ lives and wills. You have been blind, thoughtless, provincial and unimaginative. It seems to me that a government so careless of anything but its own gratification should be at very least replaced.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are fated,” he said. “We have little free will, for all we deceive ourselves otherwise. If we perish or live through this venture, it will not count for much in the overall scheme of things.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All this is doubtless pre-ordained. Our destinies have been linked from the first.” “Such philosophies can lead to unhealthy fatalism,” said Terndrik of Hasghan. “Best believe our fates are our own, even if the evidence denies it.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You blame the gods, then?” “I blame the despair that the gods brought.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source