Michael Moorcock Quotes

30 Sourced Quotes

What the local politicians actually meant was that they hoped to claim the land in the name of the public and then make the usual profits privatizing it. There was a principle at stake. They had to ensure their friends and not outsiders got the benefit.

Michael Moorcock
Legends are best left as legends and attempts to make them real are rarely successful

Michael Moorcock
The problems for which I could find no solution in fact had no solution.

Michael Moorcock
Destiny's Champion,
Fate's fool.
Eternity's Soldier,
Time's Tool.

Michael Moorcock
If the people at the top think that reaching for a gun will solve the problem, why shouldn't the people at the bottom think the same?

Michael Moorcock
Is the prisoner a prisoner because he lives in a cage or because he knows that he lives in a cage?

Michael Moorcock
The Lords of Chaos are
the enemies of Logic,
the jugglers of Truth,
the molders of Beauty

Michael Moorcock
Nothing is known for certain, Isarda. All knowledge is illusion—purpose is a meaningless word, a mere sound, a reassuring fragment of melody in a cacophony of clashing chords. All is flux—matter is like these jewels. (She throws a handful of gleaming gems upon the golden surface; they scatter. When the last jewel has ceased to move, she looks up at him.) Sometimes they fall into a rough pattern, usually they do not. So as this moment, a pattern has been formed—you and I stand here speaking. But at any moment that which constitutes our beings may be scattered again.

Michael Moorcock
Heroes betray us. By having them, in real life, we betray ourselves.

Michael Moorcock
It is almost impossible to have a baseless snobbish opinion of the General Theory of Relativity.

Michael Moorcock
All Empires fall,
All ages die,
All strife shall be in vain.
All Kings go down,
All hope must fail,
But Tanelorn remains—
Our Tanelorn remains...

Michael Moorcock
Man may trust man, Prince Elric, but perhaps we'll never have a truly sane world until men learn to trust mankind. That would mean the death of magic, I think.

Michael Moorcock
I would be grateful if I was allowed to work out my own destiny for once, I said. For good or ill.

Michael Moorcock
There was no more dangerous kind of madman than one who devoted a good brain and a courageous heart to unhealthy ambitions.

Michael Moorcock
He was a fool, said Willow calmly to Klein. There are many who refuse their responsibilities. Fooling themselves they search for a 'higher ideal'. He was a fool.
What are responsibilities? said Klein laconically. He knows. Responsibility, my dear, is another word for self-interest. For survival.
She looked at Klein uncomprehendingly.

Michael Moorcock
When gods die, self-respect buds', murmured Orland Fank. 'Gods and their examples are not needed by those who respect themselves and, consequently, respect others. Gods are for children, for little, fearful people, for those who would have no responsibility to themselves or their fellows.

Michael Moorcock
I think of myself as a bad writer with big ideas, but I'd rather be that than a big writer with bad ideas.

Michael Moorcock
By means of our myths and legends we maintain a sense of what we are worth and who we are. Without them we should undoubtedly go mad.

Michael Moorcock
I felt sorry for him at that moment. He only wanted what every man wanted—freedom from fear, a chance to raise children with a reasonable certainty that they would be allowed to do the same, a chance to look forward to the future without the knowledge that any plans made might be wrecked forever by some sudden act of violence.

Michael Moorcock
Americans need bullshit the way koala bears need eucalyptus leaves. They've become totally addicted to it. They get so much of it back home that they can't survive without it.

Michael Moorcock
There must be countless forms of love. Which is the form which conquers the rest? I cannot define it. I shall not try.

Michael Moorcock
I stared at the water and saw the clouds reflected in it, saw them break to reveal the moon. It was the same moon I had known as John Daker. The same bland face could be made out staring down in contentment at the antics of the creatures of the planet it circled. How many disasters had that moon witnessed? How many foolish crusades? How many wars and battles and murders?

Michael Moorcock
It's getting late. I must return to my ship or my men will think I've drowned and be celebrating.

Michael Moorcock
Here, I thought, I had found the human race in its final stages of decadence—perverse, insouciant, without ambition. And I could not blame them. After all, they had no future.

Michael Moorcock
Because I had sought to challenge Destiny, Destiny had taken vengeance.

Michael Moorcock
I know not which I prefer the look of—those who attack us or that which defends us!

Michael Moorcock
And now, Elric had told three lies. The first concerned his cousin Yyrkoon. The second concerned the Black Sword. The third concerned Cymoril. 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
Treasures are not won by care and forethought but by swift slaying and reckless attack.

Michael Moorcock
He existed in all the many dimensions of the multiverse. Yet he, in common with all others, was bound by the dimension of Time. He had cast off the chains of space but was tied, as perhaps all denizens of the multiverse would always be, by the imperturbable prowl of Time, which brooked no halt, which condoned no tampering with its movement, whether to slow it or to speed it.
Time, the changer, could not be changed. Space, perhaps, the material environment, could be conquered. Time, never.

Michael Moorcock
Doomed Lord's Passing. For the mind of man alone is free to explore the lofty vastness of the cosmic infinite, to transcend ordinary consciousness, to roam the secret corridors of the brain where past and future melt into one...And universe and individual are linked, the one mirrored in the other, and each contains the other.

Michael Moorcock