Michael Moorcock Quotes

I have little belief in human progress. The human race is incurably idiotic. It will never be happy.

I go dreaming into the future, where I see nothing, nothing. I have no plans, no idea, no project, and, what is worse, no ambition. Something – the eternal ‘what’s the use?’ – sets its bronze barrier across every avenue that I open up in the realm of hypothesis.

I had rather be an oyster than a man, the most stupid and senseless of animals.

Every reiteration of the idea that nothing matters debases the human spirit.

I do get cynical, but what can you do? It doesn't make any difference.

Humanity, you never had it to begin with.

The ending is one of my blackest, utterly without hope of any sort.

The destructive character lives from the feeling, not that life is worth living, but that suicide is not worth the trouble.

I'm sorry, I'm absolutely convinced that there is at the moment no realistic prospect for very much hope in human affairs.

As a Scandinavian, I like hopelessness and the weird austerity in the hopelessness of things.

I don’t understand why we must do things in this world, why we must have friends and aspirations, hopes and dreams. Wouldn’t it be better to retreat to a faraway corner of the world, where all its noise and complications would be heard no more? Then we could renounce culture and ambitions; we would lose everything and gain nothing; for what is there to be gained from this world?

As in an icicle the agnostic abides alone. The vital principle is taken out of all endeavor for improving himself or bettering hisfellows. All hope in the grand possibilities of life are blasted.

Everything is the same, nothing is worthwhile, the world is senseless, knowledge strangles.

But for what purpose was the earth formed?" asked Candide. "To drive us mad," replied Martin.

In a world that's ugly and a lie, it's hard to even want to try.

It is good to be a cynic - it is better to be a contented cat - and it is best not to exist at all.

A world without hope, but no despair

Humanity, you never had it from the beginning." That was my motto.

There comes a time when the blankness of the future is just so extreme, it's like such a black wall of nothingness. Not of bad things like a cave full of monsters and so, you're afraid of entering it. It's just nothingness, the void, emptiness and it is just horrible. It's like contemplating a future-less future and so you just want to step out of it. The monstrosity of being alive overwhelms you.

The Fourteenth Book is entitled, "What can a Thoughtful Man Hope for Mankind on Earth, Given the Experience of the Past Million Years?" It doesn't take long to read The Fourteenth Book. It consists of one word and a period. This is it: "Nothing.

"Tell me, Tool, what dominates your thoughts?" The Imass shrugged before replying. "I think of futility, Adjunct." "Do all Imass think about futility?" "No. Few think at all." "Why is that?" The Imass leaned his head to one side and regarded her. "Because, Adjunct, it is futile."

It is best not to have been born at all: but, if born, as quickly as possible to return whence one came.

How much good it would do if one could exterminate the human race.

Jake was close to tears. In that moment he saw the world in its true light, as a place where nothing had ever been any good and nothing of significance done: no art worth a second look, no philosophy of the slightest appositeness, no law but served the state, no history that gave an inkling of how it had been and what had happened. And no love, only egotism, infatuation and lust.

How do you know what the world is like? Do you know the world is a foul sty? Do you know if you rip the fronts off houses you'd find swine? The world's a hell. What does it matter what happens in it?