"Here the idea of God has been replaced by the idea of the Future. The two notions are, admittedly, all but identical in the way in which they are self-contradictory and thus always fundamentally confusing to their worshippers, who must look to priests for translation, and so inevitably the priests gradually take power..."

“Socialists are always quarreling amongst themselves, because of the strong element of messianism in their creeds.”

“I looked down at her shriveled corpse. It lay across that of her brother. One had represented the evil of the world, the other the good. Yet both had been defeated by pride, by ambition, by a promise of immortality.”

“It is many years since I have wielded a weapon larger than a pen, borne anything weightier than a difficult problem in philosophy.”

“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.”

“Your imagination is notoriously poor. Not everyone holds identical ambitions to your own!”

“If he wished he could resurrect the Dragon Isle’s former might and rule both his own land and the Young Kingdoms as an invulnerable tyrant. But his reading has also taught him to question the uses to which power is put, to question his motives, to question whether his own power should be used at all, in any cause. His reading has led him to this “morality”, which, still, he barely understands.”