# Quote — Michael Moorcock, The Steel Tsar

> Light suddenly caught the steel of his helmet and made it burn like the face of some mighty fallen angel. It could have been the face of Lucifer himself. I felt then that he was perfectly capable of destroying the whole world without a shred of remorse if he believed that he could not, himself, go on living. Such creatures, I remember thinking, have always dwelt among us. They would reduce the multiverse to ash, if they could. Why, I agonized, can we not recognize them and stop them before they achieve so much power? A tiny part of the human race was responsible for the misery of the majority.
>
> I thought again of the injustices which we ourselves casually perpetrated and I wondered how we should ever set anything to rights while we continued to allow such vast discrepancy, so much at odds with the religious and political principles we claim as our daily guides.

- Author: [Michael Moorcock](https://www.leafyquotes.com/michael-moorcock.md)
- Book: [The Steel Tsar](https://www.leafyquotes.com/michael-moorcock/the-steel-tsar.md)
- Page: 386
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Michael_Moorcock#The_Steel_Tsar_(1981)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/michael-moorcock/the-steel-tsar/light-suddenly-caught

## More from this book

> Here the idea of God has been replaced by the idea of the Future.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 (or whatever they call them) gradually take power...

p. 413 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/michael-moorcock/the-steel-tsar/here-the-idea.md)

> Unlike so many politicians or military leaders they made no attempt to justify their mistakes, to cling to power. For them power held enormous responsibility and was merely invested in them temporarily.

p. 370 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/michael-moorcock/the-steel-tsar/unlike-so-many.md)

> “We are still ruled, in some ways, by our Church. We are a people more cursed by religion and its manifestations and assumptions than any other. The Steel Tsar, with his messianic socialism, offers us religion again, perhaps. You English have never had quite the same need for God. We have known despair and conquest too often to ignore Him altogether.” He shrugged. “Old habits, Mr Bastable. Religion is the panacea for defeat. We have a great tendency to rationalize our despair in mystical and utopian terms.”

p. 361 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/michael-moorcock/the-steel-tsar/we-are-still.md)