Michael Moorcock Quotes

One duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.

History is always changing behind us, and the past changes a little every time we retell it.

Nothing changes more constantly than the past

History is not a toboggan slide, but a road to be reconsidered and even retraced

History has to be rewritten because history is the selection of those threads of causes or antecedents that we are interested in.

I think I regard any history in quotes, because just like science, we're constantly revising science, we're constantly revising history.

A new future requires a new past.

We can be almost certain of being wrong about the future, if we are wrong about the past.

Everyone must learn from the past.

A recorded past is no more than a bygone present composed of the footprints made by human beings actually going somewhere but not knowing (in any extended sense), and certainly not revealing to us, how, they came to be afoot on these particular journeys.

…everything has a past. Everything – a person, an object, a word, everything. If you don’t know the past, you can’t understand the present and plan properly for the future.

Remembrance restores possibility to the past, making what happened incomplete and completing what never was. Remembrance is neither what happened nor what did not happen but, rather, their potentialization, their becoming possible once again.

The past is what makes now like now makes tomorrow.

History is our guide, and without a knowledge of history, we are lost!

Today, I don't believe in destiny. But I do believe in history...There's nothing more powerful than history.

Those who would repeat the past must control the teaching of history.

History illumes reality, vitalizes memory, provides guidance in daily life

Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men's reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.

If history is really relevant in today's world, the proposition doesn't command much respect. Perhaps the past is a different country, but if so no one much wants to travel there.

Understanding the past requires pretending that you don't know the present.

History gives us a kind of chart, and we dare not surrender even a small rushlight in the darkness. The hasty reformer who does not remember the past will find himself condemned to repeat it.

History, which interprets the past to understand the present and confront the future is the least rewarding discipline for a dying species.

It is difficult to discuss... history.. it is more difficult to talk about today.. simple things…

The past, as you suggest, is absolutely present at all times and the present is born from the past. I wouldn't want to suggest that the past determines the present.

Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living.