Michael Moorcock Quotes

The book trade invented literary prizes to stimulate sales, not to reward merit.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Treasures are not won by care and forethought but by swift slaying and reckless attack.

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.

The subtlest lie of all is the full truth.

It is only about things which concern us most profoundly that we lie clearly and with profound conviction.

The past is a script we are constantly rewriting.

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

It's History that's caused all the troubles in the past.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Our scientific advances will be merely obscene unless they help the large part of our world's population emerge from miserable uncertainty and debilitating terror.

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

Everything means nothing that is the only truth.

Time is the enemy of identity

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

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?