Quotes by Alan Moore

People shouldnt be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people.

Emotional position is part of it, but as an individual you are not your emotions, neither are you your intellect. These are things that you have . Theyre not things that you are . Therefore you have to start to become aware of the different requirements that human beings have, the different areas that they like to be satisfied in. Which means becoming aware of yourself. I mean, as a writer youre gonna have to understand pretty much the whole universe. But the best place to start is by understanding the inner universe. The entire universe – for one thing – only exists in your perceptions. Thats all youre gonna see of it. To all practical intents and purposes this is purely some kind of lightshow thats being put on in the kind of neurons in our brain. The whole of reality. So. To understand the universe theres worse advice than that which was carved above the shrine of the Delphi oracle. Where it just said: “Know thyself”. Understand yourself. Know thyself is a magical goal, but like I say to me there is very little difference between magic and creative art in any sense – the laws of one apply perfectly well to the other.

402Emotional position is part of it, but as an individual you are not your emotions, neither are you your intellect. These are things that you have . Theyre not things that you are . Therefore you have to start to become aware of the different requirements that human beings have, the different areas that they like to be satisfied in. Which means becoming aware of yourself. I mean, as a writer youre gonna have to understand pretty much the whole universe. But the best place to start is by understanding the inner universe. The entire universe – for one thing – only exists in your perceptions. Thats all youre gonna see of it. To all practical intents and purposes this is purely some kind of lightshow thats being put on in the kind of neurons in our brain. The whole of reality. So. To understand the universe theres worse advice than that which was carved above the shrine of the Delphi oracle. Where it just said: “Know thyself”. Understand yourself. Know thyself is a magical goal, but like I say to me there is very little difference between magic and creative art in any sense – the laws of one apply perfectly well to the other.

I dont consider myself as a bad person, on the whole I consider myself a good person, Im good to my parents. I treat my girl right ,,, take her out and buy her stuff. And I go to church every Sunday, But Ive decided that just once I wanna do a really bad thing. I mean a really seriously bad thing. cause, ya know, like, were put on this earth with free will. We can choose to do this or that. We can choose to be good or bad. But sometimes I think most people are good and not bad only because theyre scared they might go to jail or hell or someplace. Some guy once said: Anything done out of fear has no moral value. Well, I think thats right. I figure the only way you can be truly good is if youve tried been good, and youve tried being bad, and being good feels better.

There are people.There are stories.The people think they shape the stories, but the reverse if often closer to the truth.Stories shape the world. They exist independently of people, and in places quite devoid of man, there may yet be mythologies.

machine. Unexpectedly, Id invented a time

The superman exists and hes American.

They are bright and exciting. Like America. Like its women.

Murder, other than in the most strict forensic sense, is never soluble. That dark human clot can never melt into a lucid, clear suspension. Our detective fiction tells us otherwise: everything is just neat and cold ballistics. Provide a murderer, a motive and a means, and you have solved the crime. Using this method, the solution to the Second World War is as follows: Hitler. The German economy. Tanks. Thus, for convenience, we reduce the complex events.

All we ever see of stars are their old photographs.

Artists use lies to tell the truth. Yes, I created a lie. But because you believed it, you found something true about yourself.

Swamp Thing, in Hell: Demon...How...could God...allow such a place?Etrigan: Think you God built this place, wishing man ill and not lusts uncontrolled or swords unsheathed?Not God, my friend. The truths more hideous still: These halls were carved by men while yet they breathed.God is no parent or policeman grim dispensing treats or punishments to all.Each soul climbs or descends by its own whim. He mourns, but He cannot prevent their fall.We suffer as we choose. Nothings amiss. All torments are deserved...

Behind this mask there is more than just flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea... and ideas are bulletproof.

Theres no flesh or blood within this cloak to kill. Theres only an idea. Ideas are bulletproof.

We are told to remember the idea and not the man. Because a man can fail. He can be caught, he can be killed and forgotten. But 400 years later, an idea can still change the world. I have witnessed firsthand the power of ideas. Ive seen people kill in the name of them. But you cannot kiss an idea... cannot touch it or hold it.Ideas do not bleed. They do not feel pain. They do not love. And it is not an idea that I miss. It is a man.A man that made me remember the 5th of November. A man that I will never forget.

Reality, at first glance, is a simple thing: the television speaking to you now is real. Your body sunk into that chair in the approach to midnight, a clock ticking at the threshold of awareness. All the endless detail of a solid and material world surrounding you. These things exist. They can be measured with a yardstick, a voltammeter, a weighing scale. These things are real. Then there’s the mind, half-focused on the TV, the settee, the clock. This ghostly knot of memory, idea and feeling that we call ourself also exists, though not within the measurable world our science may describe.Consciousness is unquantifiable, a ghost in the machine, barely considered real at all, though in a sense this flickering mosaic of awareness is the only true reality that we can ever know. The Here-and-Now demands attention, is more present to us. We dismiss the inner world of our ideas as less important, although most of our immediate physical reality originated only in the mind. The TV, sofa, clock and room, the whole civilisation that contains them once were nothing save ideas.Material existence is entirely founded on a phantom realm of mind, whose nature and geography are unexplored. Before the Age of Reason was announced, humanity had polished strategies for interacting with the world of the imaginary and invisible: complicated magic-systems; sprawling pantheons of gods and spirits, images and names with which we labelled powerful inner forces so that we might better understand them. Intellect, Emotion and Unconscious Thought were made divinities or demons so that we, like Faust, might better know them; deal with them; become them.Ancient cultures did not worship idols. Their god-statues represented ideal states which, when meditated constantly upon, one might aspire to. Science proves there never was a mermaid, blue-skinned Krishna or a virgin birth in physical reality. Yet thought is real, and the domain of thought is the one place where gods inarguably ezdst, wielding tremendous power. If Aphrodite were a myth and Love only a concept, then would that negate the crimes and kindnesses and songs done in Love’s name? If Christ were only ever fiction, a divine Idea, would this invalidate the social change inspired by that idea, make holy wars less terrible, or human betterment less real, less sacred?The world of ideas is in certain senses deeper, truer than reality; this solid television less significant than the Idea of television. Ideas, unlike solid structures, do not perish. They remain immortal, immaterial and everywhere, like all Divine things. Ideas are a golden, savage landscape that we wander unaware, without a map.Be careful: in the last analysis, reality may be exactly what we think it is.

Are you like, a crazy person?I’m quite sure they will say so.

Perhaps this is the purpose of all art, all writing, on the murders, fiction and non-fiction: Simply to participate.

We have laboured long to build a heaven, only to find it populated with horrors.

Now, as I understand it, the bards were feared. They were respected, but more than that they were feared. If you were just some magician, if youd pissed off some witch, then whats she gonna do, shes gonna put a curse on you, and whats gonna happen? Your hens are gonna lay funny, your milks gonna go sour, maybe one of your kids is gonna get a hare-lip or something like that — no big deal. You piss off a bard, and forget about putting a curse on you, he might put a satire on you. And if he was a skilful bard, he puts a satire on you, it destroys you in the eyes of your community, it shows you up as ridiculous, lame, pathetic, worthless, in the eyes of your community, in the eyes of your family, in the eyes of your children, in the eyes of yourself, and if its a particularly good bard, and hes written a particularly good satire, then three hundred years after youre dead, people are still gonna be laughing, at what a twat you were.