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Michael Moorcock

303 quotes

“It’s never ‘should’ with engineers, my old friend, but ‘how’? Have you not learned that much?”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The English, I now know, eat mashed fish and deviled sheep’s hearts to guarantee a bad digestion (and consequent irritability). It is their abominable cooking which has given them half the world as their Empire.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I had learned, after all, to trust neither religion nor politics and to put my faith in the realities of metal, wood and steam, in practical engineering, whose rules could neither be changed nor made the subject of morality, so why should I show reverence for mere antiquity?”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If you were to believe all the old, degenerate German legends, there’s a Grail in every castle, a Charlemagne or an Arthur under every mound! There not a noble house without at least one werewolf offspring or a younger son who’s made a pact with the Devil, an uncle practising the profane arts of alchemy, a vampirical grandfather, a mad monk, a ruined abbey in the grounds where witches meet, an incarcerated lunatic (or heiress—or both), an infanticide or two (and a patricide), and, of course, a family ghost.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In other words, the listener’s own picture was painted in the shining coulours St Odhran provided. By seeing what they wished, they also saw what he wished them to see. “They are the Orchestra,” he had told me earlier, “and I am merely the Conductor.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Do you know what damnation can be, Sir? It can be a state of permanent caution, making one chronically unable to risk anything, even a risk which might save one from extinction.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My instinct shouted “Conspiracy” but my head reasoned “Coincidence”.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Did God truly build and populate a small planet for His own purposes; perhaps merely to relieve His boredom?”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Warlocks and witches debate to determine how to make their broomsticks fly again. But how shall they ever come together in strength? Even if your ideas had any truth, they’re so frequently, by their very character, at odds. Each claims to hold the key to the only wisdom. That’s where natural philosophers, who do not impose what they need to believe (or at least not so readily!) upon the world, but analyze what they see, have the strong advantage.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Destiny was apparently a word describing an individual’s desperate need for certainty.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I guessed he experienced the terrible confusion of a true solipsist when the outer world impinges.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Better wicked Lucifer for a master, thought I, than a pious Tyrant!”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My bargain with God included the undertaking that I should play no direct part, merely supervise mankind’s self-redemption. Like yourself, my agents are those whose independence of thought is already well-established.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Redefine the terms by which Man views the world, and thus eventually you redefine the world itself.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My own self-deception at least promised some kind of pleasure. Theirs offered nothing but terror and guilt.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I must believe you doomed to eternal life, but also to eternal repetition! Your true doom is simple to me. You lack brains, Sir.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We’ll build a world where Order shall prevail. A few more deaths are inconsequential, surely, if they guarantee us eternal life and absolute fulfillment?”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Are you aware we anticipate the Apocalypse, von Bek?” “The obsession’s common enough, Montsorbier, amongst ignorant folk.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You may be abandoned by Satan, Sir, and I abandoned by God, but that does not put us in the same cart, nor even upon the same road.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He had thought his wars over. Now he realized peace had been merely a lull.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You’re as worthless as one of that decrepit mob. Lucifer has rejected you. Now mankind rejects you. Have the good taste, Sir, to accept a fact!”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You are martyred, as woman is ever martyred, particularly if she seeks her own power.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Thus woman trusts in man down all the years and so, as always, is betrayed.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A whole tangle of series, possibly including everything Moorcock's written, not excluding his grocery lists, but I'm not sure; certainly includes most of his fantasy. Various subseries are declared complete every so often, as for example in an ad for the Last Elric Book in the current issue of F&SF; such declarations sometimes prove true, but on the other hand, I've seen several previous Last Elric Books.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Moorcock is an erudite Left-anarchist and a giant of fantasy literature. Almost everything he’s written is of interest, but Hawkmoon is chosen here in honor of Moorcock having said about it: “In a spirit consciously at odds with the jingoism of the day, I chose a German for a hero and the British for villains.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Those who did not like her said that she was a witch. And it is true that two of my women saw her consorting with the spell-seller from the Souk. The one called Lallah Zenobia. The black woman. Thou and I art men of the world and understand that it is superstitious folly. But thou knowest how women are. And they are often,” he added in an even lower tone, “susceptible to Yehudim flattery and lies.” It was by no means the first time I had to accept such sentiments from the mouth of one who was otherwise hospitality, tolerance and kindness personified. To persuade a desert Arab that Jews are not in direct and regular touch with Satan and all his minions is still no easier than persuading a Dixie Baptist that the doors of a Catholic Church are not necessarily a direct gateway to Hell.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We never accepted, thank God, the conventional wisdoms of psychiatry. And madness here, as elsewhere, is defined by the people in power, usually calling themselves the State. Tomorrow those power holders could be overthrown by a fresh dynasty and what was yesterday simple common sense today becomes irresponsible folly. So I do not like to make hasty judgements or pronounce readily on others’ moral or mental condition—lest, indeed, we inadvertently condemn ourselves.” He paused. “They say this was not so under the British, but it was fairer, more predictable. Only real troublemakers and criminals went to jail. Now it isn't as bad as it was when I was a lad. Then anyone was liable to arrest. If it was better under the British, then that is our shame.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There were three known existing sapphires. One was in the Conquest of Space Museum on Terra, one was in the hands of United System President Polonius Delph—he was the richest man in seven worlds, or had been until he’d paid cash for his jewel. The other had been stolen soon after its discovery. Maybe Delph had it... “From what I understand of your world, Delph isn’t the only one who wants the sapphires. He has rivals in the Plutocracy. Another mysterious collector? Or those rivals are competing for the presidency or they think they can ruin him. As you know, it’s a vicious circle in politics. You can’t get to be president unless you have the wealth and you can’t really make massive sums until you’re president.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Wasn’t all their effort worthless? Wouldn’t it be better to accept the impossibility of their mission? He began to think Krane was mad. If there were a threat, then inevitably they would die. Death was the future of all people, all planets, all universes. Their struggle was symbolic of the futility of living creatures who fought against their own inevitable extinction. What were a few more years of existence compared to the longevity of a cosmos? In those terms, the whole history of their species lasted for less than a fraction of a second. And then, sheltering beside him under the protection of the energy equalizer, she looked up for a second, and, obscurely, he understood that the effort always would be worth it. Always had been worth it.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The time has come for the dismantling of fantasies. That is already happening to our universe. Now that we have this one chance of survival we must finally rid ourselves of fantasies and seize that chance! For centuries our race has built on false assumptions. If you build a fantasy based on a false assumption and continue to build on such a fantasy, your whole existence becomes a lie which you implant in others who are too lazy or too busy to question its truth. In this manner you threaten the very existence of reality, because, by refusing to obey its laws, those laws engulf and destroy you. The human race has for too long been manufacturing convenient fantasies and calling them laws. For ages this was so. Take war, for instance. Politicians assume that something is true, assume that strife is inevitable, and by building on such false assumptions, lo and behold, they create further wars which they have, ostensibly, sought to prevent. We have, until now, accepted too many fantasies as being truths, too many truths as fantasies. And we have one last chance to discover the real nature of our existence. I am prepared to take it!”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This is the stuff which some Nazis wished to put into our churches,” whispered von Bek. “Pagan objects of worship which they claim are the symbols of a true German religion. They are almost as anti-Christian as they are anti-Semitic. It is as if they hate every system of thought which in any way questions their own mish-mash of pseudo-philosophy and mystical claptrap!” He stared at the altar in disgust. “They are the worst kind of nihilists. They cannot even see that they destroy everything and create nothing. Their invention is as empty as any inventions of Chaos I have seen. It has no true history, no concrete substance, no depth, no quality of intellect. It is merely a negation, a brutal denial of all Germany’s virtues.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The fate of sentient life itself sometimes seems to me to be at stake. Yet do I fear? No, I think not. I place no special value upon sentience. I’d as cheerfully become a tree!” “Who’s to say they are not sentient?” Corum smiled as he set a pan upon the fire and began to lay strips of meat in the slowly boiling water. “Well, then, a block of marble.” “Again, we do not know…” Corum began, but Jhary cut him short with a snort of impatience. “I’ll not play such childish games!” “You misunderstand me. You have touched on a subject I have been considering only lately, you see. I, too, am beginning to realize that there is no special value to being, as it were, able to think. Indeed, one can see many disadvantages. The whole condition of mortals is created by their ability to analyze the universe and their inability to understand it.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There are those who have an interest in using legends and superstitions for their own ends. They cherish such notions not for their own sake but for the use to which they can be put. Poor, wretched people who cannot love life seek for something beyond life, something they prefer to regard as better than life. And, as a result, they corrupt the knowledge they discover and, in turn, associate their own weaknesses with this knowledge—at least, in the minds of others like myself. “But the knowledge you have brought us, Corum—that extends our appreciate of life. You speak of a variety of worlds where mankind flourishes. You offer us information which brings light to our understanding, where the corrupt and the lost speak only of mysteries and dark superiorities and seek to elevate themselves in their own eyes and the eyes of their fellows.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Gandhi had been right. There was only one way to behave, even if it seemed, in the short term, against one’s self-interest. Surely it was in one’s self-interest in the long term to exhibit generosity, humanity, kindness and a sense of justice to one’s fellow men. It was cynicism of Beesley’s kind which had, after all, led to the threatened extinction of the whole human race. There could be no such thing s a “righteous” war, for war was by its very nature an act of injustice against the individual, but there could be such a thing as an “unrighteous” war—an evil war, a war begun by men who were utterly corrupt, both morally and intellectually. I had begun to think that it was a definition of those who would make war—that whatever motives they claimed, whatever ideals they promoted, whatever “threat” they referred to, they could not be excused—because of their actions they could only be of a degenerate and immoral character.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This could be the beginning of Civil War. There is no kind more distressing, no kind which so rapidly describes the pointlessness of human killing human. I have been fated, for a reason I cannot comprehend or for no reason at all, to witness the worst examples of insane warfare (and all warfare, it seems to me now, is that) and having to listen to the most ridiculous explanations as to its “necessity” from otherwise perfectly rational people, I have long since become weary, Moorcock, of the debate. If I appear to you to be in a more reconciled mood than when your grandfather first met me it is because I have learned that no individual is responsible for War—that we are all, at the same time, individually responsible for the ills of the human condition. In learning this, (and I am about to tell you how I learned it) I also learned a certain tolerance for myself and for others which I had never previously possessed.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Light suddenly caught the steel of his helmet and made it burn like the face of some mighty fallen angel. It could have been the face of Lucifer himself. I felt then that he was perfectly capable of destroying the whole world without a shred of remorse if he believed that he could not, himself, go on living. Such creatures, I remember thinking, have always dwelt among us. They would reduce the multiverse to ash, if they could. Why, I agonized, can we not recognize them and stop them before they achieve so much power? A tiny part of the human race was responsible for the misery of the majority. I thought again of the injustices which we ourselves casually perpetrated and I wondered how we should ever set anything to rights while we continued to allow such vast discrepancy, so much at odds with the religious and political principles we claim as our daily guides.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It remained difficult for me to understand how some people are simply born mentally deformed, lacking all the natural moral restraints and imagination which dictate the actions of most of us, however partially. Such creatures have learned from childhood to ape the appropriate sentiments when it suits them, to charm or bully their opponents, to agree to anything, to tell any lie and to pursue their own ends with implacable determination. “Such men and women are the true aliens amongst you and it is ironic how frequently we come to rule you. We use your very best instincts and deepest emotions against you. We convince you that we alone can satisfy your need for security and comfort and then we drain you dry of everything save perpetual terror. Ha, ha, ha!”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She was grumbling. “The least he could have done was drop us near a town. Although in these parts they’d probably burn us as witches before asking any questions.” She shuddered. “I’m an awful snob about peasants, I’m afraid.” I mentioned dryly that I thought those of her political persuasion had some sort of egalitarian duty to resist such prejudice. “Egalitarianism isn’t about prejudices,” she said, “it’s about equal shares of power. It’s the only means we have of steering some sort of even course through a future which is forever, by the very nature of the multiverse, unguessable. We have only institutions and a crude, fragile kind of democracy standing between us and absolute Chaos. That is why we must value and protect those institutions. And be forever reexamining them.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is, in my view, a level at which the hero can become faintly ridiculous, often because he never fundamentally questions the rules. For instance, John Wayne’s characters were always basically in favor of old-fashioned paternalism, no matter how much they pretended to be rugged individualists. Later, I became fascinated by the kind of book examining the myths which make such heroes attractive (Lord Jim, for instance) and came to understand that there is a level at which the heroic ideal can be used as a mere manipulative propaganda designed for instance to make young women sacrifice their futures in unjust marriages or young men sacrifice their lives in unjust wars.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Despairingly, sometimes, I seek the comfort of a benign god, Shaarilla. My mind goes out, lying awake at night, searching through black barrenness for something—anything—which will take me to it, warm me, protect me, tell me that there is order in the chaotic tumble of the universe; that it is consistent, this precision of the planets, not simply a brief, bright spark of sanity in an eternity of malevolent anarchy.” Elric sighed and his quiet tones were tinged with hopelessness. “Without some confirmation of the order of things, my only comfort is to accept the anarchy. This way, I can revel in chaos and know, without fear, that we are doomed from the start—that our brief existence is both meaningless and damned. I can accept, then, that we are more than forsaken, because there was never anything there to forsake us. I have weighed the proof, Shaarilla, and must believe that anarchy prevails, in spite of all the laws which seemingly govern our actions, our sorcery, our logic. I see only chaos in the world. If the book we seek tells me otherwise, then I shall gladly believe it. Until then, I will put my trust only in my sword and myself.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“With a crash, the cover fell to the floor, sending the bright gems skipping and dancing over the paving stones. Beneath Elric’s twitching hands lay nothing but a pile of yellowish dust. “No!” His scream was anguished, unbelieving. “No!” Tears flowed down his contorted face as he ran his hands through the fine dust. With a groan which racked his whole being, he fell forward, his face hitting the disintegrated parchment. Time had destroyed the Book—untouched, possibly forgotten, for three hundred centuries. Even the wise and powerful gods who had created it had perished—and now its knowledge followed them into oblivion.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Intelligence and power were never the same thing,” murmurs the Rose, departing from her own train of thought for a moment. “Frequently a lust for power is nothing more than an impulse of the stupidly baffled who cannot understand why they have been treated so badly by Dame Fortune. Who can blame those brutes, sometimes? They are outraged by random Nature. Perhaps the gods feel the same? Perhaps they make us endure such awful trials because they know we are actually superior to them? Perhaps they have become senile and forget the point of their old truces?” “You speak truth in one area, madam,” said Elric. “Nature distributes power with about the same lack of discrimination as she distributes intelligence or beauty or wealth, indeed!” “Which is why mankind,” says Wheldrake, revealing a little of his own background, “has a duty to correct such mistakes of justice that Nature makes.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One may mirror the truth or seek to assuage it,” said Elric. “Sometimes one can even try to change it...” Wheldrake took a sudden pull on his bumper. “I was not raised to a world, sir, where truth was malleable and reality a question of what you made it. It is hard for me to hear such notions. Indeed, sir, I will admit to you that it alarms me. Not that I fail to appreciate the wonder of it, sir, or the optimism which you are, in your own way, expressing. It is just that I was born to trust and celebrate certain senses and accept that a great unchanging beauty was the order of the universe, a set of natural laws which, as it were, coincided in subtle ways with a mighty machine—intricate and complex but ultimately rational. This Nature, sir, was what I celebrated and worshipped, as other might celebrate and worship a Deity. What you suggest, sir, seems to me retrogressive. These, surely, are closer to the discredited notions of alchemy?”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That evening I lit many candles and sat in the library wearing fresh linen and drinking good wine while I read a treatise on astronomy by a student of Kepler’s and reflected on my increasing disagreement with Luther, who had judged reason to be the chief enemy of Faith, of the purity of his beliefs. He had considered reason a harlot, willing to turn to anyone’s needs, but this merely displayed his own suspicion of logic. I have come to believe him the madman Catholics described him as. Most mad people see logic as a threat to the dream in which they would rather live, a threat to their attempts to make the dream reality (usually through force, through threat, through manipulation and through bloodshed). It is why men of reason are so often the first to be killed or exiled by tyrants.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“At that moment I railed against a God who could condemn such an innocent soul to Purgatory. What had Sedenko done that was not the result of his upbringing or his religion, which encouraged him to kill in the name of Christ? It came to me that perhaps God had become senile, that He had lost His memory and no longer remembered the purpose of placing Man on Earth. He had become petulant, He had become whimsical. He retained His power over us, but could no longer be appealed to. And where was His Son, who had been sent to redeem us? Was God’s Plan not so much mysterious as impossible for us to accept: because it was a malevolent one?”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It had been some years since I had lost my Faith, save in my own capacity to survive a world at War, but evidently in the back of my mind there had always been some sense that through God one might find salvation. Now, as I journeyed in quest of the Holy Grail (or something identified as the Holy Grail), I not only questioned the possibility that salvation existed; I questioned whether God’s salvation was worth the earning. Again I began to see the struggle between God and Lucifer as nothing more than a squabble between petty princelings over who should possess power in a tiny, unimportant territory. The fate of the tenants of that territory did not much seem to matter to them; and even the reward of those tenants’ loyalty seemed thin enough to me.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Despair leads to many forms of thought,” said the magus, “and many kinds of action. Despair drives some to greater sanity, towards an analysis of the world as it is and what it might be. Others it drives to deep and dangerous insanity, towards an imposition of their own desires upon reality. I sympathize with your despair, Johannes Klosterheim, because it has no solace, in the end. Your despair is the worst there is to know. And yet men often look upon the likes of you and envy you, as you doubtless envy Duke Arioch, as Duke Arioch doubtless envies his master Lucifer, whom he would betray, and perhaps as Lucifer envied God. And what does God envy, I wonder? Perhaps he envies the simple mortal who is content with his lot and envies nobody.”
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