Hunter S. Thompson quotes are thought-provoking, memorable and inspiring. From views on society and politics to thoughts on love and life, Hunter S. Thompson has a lot to say. In this list we present the 156 best Hunter S. Thompson quotes, in no particular order. Let yourself get inspired!
(And check out our page with Hunter S. Thompson quotes per category if you only want to read quotes from a certain category, such as funny, life, love, politics, and more).
Hunter S. Thompson quotes
We are all alone, born alone, die alone, and—in spite of True Romance magazines—we shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way. I do not say lonely—at least, not all the time—but essentially, and finally, alone. This is what makes your self-respect so important, and I don’t see how you can respect yourself if you must look in the hearts and minds of others for your happiness.
— Hunter S. Thompson, The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967
Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming “Wow! What a Ride!
— Hunter S. Thompson, The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967
Life has become immeasurably better since I have been forced to stop taking it seriously.
— Hunter S. Thompson
No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride…and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well…maybe chalk it up to forced consciousness expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
When the going gets weird, the weird turn professional.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72
Maybe there is no Heaven. Or maybe this is all pure gibberish—a product of the demented imagination of a lazy drunken hillbilly with a heart full of hate who has found a way to live out where the real winds blow—to sleep late, have fun, get wild, drink whisky, and drive fast on empty streets with nothing in mind except falling in love and not getting arrested . . . Res ipsa loquitur. Let the good times roll.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Generation of Swine: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the ’80’s
Faster, Faster, until the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of death.
— Hunter S. Thompson
A word to the wise is infuriating.
— Hunter S. Thompson
This is the fast lane, folks…and some of us like it here.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century
Hallucinations are bad enough. But after awhile you learn to cope with things like seeing your dead grandmother crawling up your leg with a knife in her teeth. Most acid fanciers can handle this sort of thing. But nobody can handle that other trip-the possibility that any freak with $1.98 can walk into the Circus-Circus and suddenly appear in the sky over downtown Las Vegas twelve times the size of God, howling anything that comes into his head. No, this is not a good town for psychedelic drugs.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
KNOW YOUR DOPE FIEND. YOUR LIFE MAY DEPEND ON IT! You will not be able to see his eyes because of the Tea-Shades, but his knuckles will be white from inner tension and his pants will be crusted with semen from constantly jacking off when he can’t find a rape victim. He will stagger and babble when questioned. He will not respect your badge. The Dope Fiend fears nothing. He will attack, for no reason, with every weapon at his command-including yours. BEWARE. Any officer apprehending a suspected marijuana addict should use all necessary force immediately. One stitch in time (on him) will usually save nine on you. Good luck.-The Chief
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Across the board… Not junkies or freaks, but people who were just as comfortable with drugs like weed, booze, or coke as we are – and we’re not weird, are we? Hell no, we’re just overworked professionals who need to relax now and then, have a bit of the whoop and the giggle, right?
— Hunter S. Thompson, Ancient Gonzo Wisdom: Interviews with Hunter S. Thompson
I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours.
— Hunter S. Thompson
If I’d written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people – including me – would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72
Morality is temporary, wisdom is permanent.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century
So we shall let the reader answer this question for himself: who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?
— Hunter S. Thompson
She laughed. ‘It won’t last. Nothing lasts. But I’m happy now.”Happy, ‘ I muttered, trying to pin the word down. But it is one of those words, like Love, that I have never quite understood. Most people who deal in words don’t have much faith in them and I am no exception–especially the big ones like Happy and Love and Honest and Strong. They are too elusive and far too relative when you compare them to sharp, mean little words like Punk and Cheap and Phony. I feel at home with these, because they’re scrawny and easy to pin, but the big ones are tough and it takes either a priest or a fool to use them with any confidence.
— Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary
No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun — for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax — This won’t hurt
— Hunter S. Thompson
The real power in America is held by a fast-emerging new Oligarchy of pimps and preachers who see no need for Democracy or fairness or even trees, except maybe the ones in their own yards, and they don’t mind admitting it. They worship money and power and death. Their ideal solution to all the nation’s problems would be another 100 Year War.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century
I have no taste for either poverty or honest labor, so writing is the only recourse left for me.
— Hunter S. Thompson, The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967
I’ve always considered writing the most hateful kind of work. I suspect it’s a bit like fucking — which is fun only for amateurs. Old whores don’t do much giggling. Nothing is fun when you have to do it — over and over, again and again…
— Hunter S. Thompson, The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time
Music has always been a matter of Energy to me, a question of Fuel. Sentimental people call it Inspiration, but what they really mean is Fuel. I have always needed Fuel. I am a serious consumer. On some nights I still believe that a car with the gas needle on empty can run about fifty more miles if you have the right music very loud on the radio.
— Hunter S. Thompson
If you’re going to be crazy, you have to get paid for it or else you’re going to be locked up.
— Hunter S. Thompson
In a closed society where everybody’s guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
For every moment of triumph, for every instance of beauty, many souls must be trampled.
— Hunter S. Thompson
America…just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable
— Hunter S. Thompson
Call on God, but row away from the rocks.
— Hunter S. Thompson
A man can live on his wits and his balls for only so long.
— Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary
What do you want? Where’s the goddamn ice I ordered? Where’s the booze? There’s a war on, man! People are being killed!
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
In a nation run by swine, all pigs are upward-mobile and the rest of us are fucked until we can put our acts together: not necessarily to win, but mainly to keep from losing completely.
— Hunter S. Thompson, The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time
The waitress had the appearance of a very old hooker who had finally found her place in life
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Coming of age in a fascist police state will not be a barrel of fun for anybody, much less for people like me, who are not inclined to suffer Nazis gladly and feel only contempt for the cowardly flag-suckers who would gladly give up their outdated freedom to live for the mess of pottage they have been conned into believing will be freedom from fear.Ho ho ho. Let’s not get carried away here. Freedom was yesterday in this country. Its value has been discounted. The only freedom we truly crave today is freedom from Dumbness. Nothing else matters.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century
Writing is the flip side of sex – it’s only good when it’s over.
— Hunter S. Thompson
So much for Objective Journalism. Don’t bother to look for it here–not under any byline of mine; or anyone else I can think of. With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72
Politics is the Art of Controlling Your Enviroment.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century
The brutal reality of politics would be probably intolerable without drugs.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century
Liberalism itself has failed, and for a pretty good reason. It has been too often compromised by the people who represented it.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72
McGovern made some stupid mistakes, but in context they seem almost frivolous compared to the things Richard Nixon does every day of his life, on purpose, as a matter of policy and a perfect expression of everything he stands for.Jesus! Where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be President?
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72
How many more of these stinking, double-downer sideshows will we have to go through before we can get ourselves straight enough to put together some kind of national election that will give me and the at least 20 million people I tend to agree with a chance to vote FOR something, instead of always being faced with that old familiar choice between the lesser of two evils?
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72
Hubert Humphrey is a treacherous, gutless old ward-heeler who should be put in a goddamn bottle and sent out with the Japanese current.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72
It is Nixon himself who represents that dark, venal and incurably violent side of the American character that almost every country in the world has learned to fear and despise. Our Barbie-doll president, with his Barbie-doll wife and his boxful of Barbie-doll children is also America’s answer to the monstrous Mr. Hyde. He speaks for the Werewolf in us; the bully, the predatory shyster who turns into something unspeakable, full of claws and bleeding string-warts on nights when the moon comes too close…
— Hunter S. Thompson
Whatever else the Florida primary might or might not have proved, it put a definite kink in the Media Theory of politics. It may be true, despite what happened to Lindsay and Muskie in Florida, that all you have to do to be President of the U.S.A. is look “attractive” on TV and have enough money to hire a Media Wizard. Only a fool or a linthead would argue with the logic at the root of the theory: If you want to sell yourself to a nation of TV addicts, you obviously can’t ignore the medium… but the Florida vote at least served to remind a lot of people that the medium is only a tool, not a magic eye. In other words, if you want to be President of the U.S.A. and you’re certified “attractive, ” the only other thing you have to worry about when you lay out all that money for a Media Wizard is whether or not you’re hiring a good one instead of a bungler… and definitely lay off the Reds when you go to the studio.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72
…if that Watergate case ever gets into court, he might get very nervous.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72
Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads? Who among us can be happy and proud of having all this innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine? These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid little rich kids like George Bush?They are the same ones who wanted to have Muhammad Ali locked up for refusing to kill gooks. They speak for all that is cruel and stupid and vicious in the American character. They are the racists and hate mongers among us — they are the Ku Klux Klan. I piss down the throats of these Nazis.And I am too old to worry about whether they like it or not. Fuck them.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century
History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of “history” it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time—and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
I hate pain, despite my ability to tolerate it beyond all known parameters, which is not necessarily a good thing.
— Hunter S. Thompson
Publishers are notoriously slothful about numbers, unless they’re attached to dollar signs – unlike journalists, quarterbacks, and felony criminal defendants who tend to be keenly aware of numbers at all times.
— Hunter S. Thompson
It was almost May. I knew that New York was getting warm now, that London was wet, that Rome was hot — and I was on Vieques, where it was always hot and where New York and London and Rome were just names on a map.
— Hunter S. Thompson
I felt a tremendous distance between myself and everything real.
— Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary
We are all wired into a survival trip now. No more of the speed that fueled that 60’s. That was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary’s trip. He crashed around America selling “consciousness expansion” without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait for all the people who took him seriously… All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit. But their loss and failure is ours too. What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole life-style that he helped create… a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old-mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody… or at least some force – is tending the light at the end of the tunnel.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Sex without love is as hollow and ridiculous as love without sex.
— Hunter S. Thompson
This place is like the Army: the shark ethic prevails–eat the wounded. In a closed society where everybody’s guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
In the terms of our Great Society the Hell’s Angels and their ilk are losers — dropouts, failures and malcontents. They are rejects looking for a way to get even with a world in which they are only a problem.The Hell’s Angels are not visionaries, but diehards, and if they are the forerunners or the vanguard of anything it is not the “moral revolution” in vogue on college campuses, but a fast-growing legion of young unemployables whose untapped energy will inevitably find the same kind of destructive outlet that “outlaws” like the Hell’s Angels have been finding for years.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Hell’s Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga
I am a confused Musician who got sidetracked into this goddamn Word business for so long that I never got back to music – except maybe when I find myself oddly alone in a quiet room with only a typewriter to strum on and a yen to write a song. Who knows why? Maybe I just feel like singing – so I type.These quick electric keys are my Instrument, my harp, my RCA glass-tube microphone, and my fine soprano saxophone all at once. That is my music, for good or ill, and on some nights it will make me feel like a god. Veni, Vidi, Vici… That is when the fun starts…
— Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century
No one HAS to do something he doesn’t want to do for the rest of his life. But then again, if that’s what you wind up doing, by all means convince yourself that you HAD to do it. You’ll have lots of company.
— Hunter S. Thompson
There’s a lot of things wrong with this country, but one of the few things still right with it is that a man can steer clear of the organized bullshit if he really wants to. It’s a goddamned luxury, and if I were you, I’d take advantage of it while you can.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist, 1968-1976
I think this was a nice idea we had in this country and a nice landscape to experiment with. But I think there comes a time in almost any experimentation or idea, where you have to evaluate it, maybe our time has come. In the context of the real world, not just the American world but all around, we haven’t done too well. We are not a very good advertisement for the idea we represented. If you lose one wheel of the car, you might be able to get to the side of the road, and some freaks can make it on two, but if you lose three, man, you’re in serious trouble. I think we’ve lost three.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Ancient Gonzo Wisdom: Interviews with Hunter S. Thompson
Finally we came over a rise and I saw the Caribbean…My first feeling was a wild desire to drive a stake in the sand and claim the place for myself. The beach was white as salt, and cut off from the world by a ring of steep hills that faced the sea. We were on the edge of a large bay and the water was that clear, turquoise color that you get with a white sand bottom. I had never seen such a place. I wanted to take off all my clothes and never wear them again.
— Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary
To give advice to a man who asks what to do with his life implies something very close to egomania. To presume to point a man to the right and ultimate goal — to point with a trembling finger in the RIGHT direction is something only a fool would take upon himself.
— Hunter S. Thompson
Living on pills, phone calls unmade, people unseen, pages unwritten, money unmade, pressure piling up all around to make some kind of breakthrough and get moving again. Get the gum off the rails, finish something, croak this awful habit of not ever getting to the end- of anything.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Screwjack
How many more nights and weird mornings can this terrible shit go on? How long can the body and the brain tolerate this doom-struck craziness? This grinding of teeth, this pouring of sweat, this pounding of blood in the temples… small blue veins gone amok in front of the ears, sixty and seventy hours with no sleep.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
The reefer butt is called a ‘roach’ because it resembles a cockroach… cockroach… cockroach…
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Well, ” he said. “I hope to God I never make forty — I wouldn’t know what to do with myself.
— Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary
All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit. But their failure is ours, too. What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole life-style that he helped to create… a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old-mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody-or at least some force-is tending that Light at the end of the tunnel.This is the same cruel and paradoxically benevolent bullshit has kept the Catholic Church going for so many centuries. It is also the military ethic…a blind faith in some higher and wiser “authority.” The Pope, The General, The Prime Minister… all the way up to “God.
— Hunter S. Thompson
Going to trial with a lawyer who considers your whole life-style a Crime in Progress is not a happy prospect.
— Hunter S. Thompson
I felt a little guilty about jangling the poor bugger’s brains with that evil fantasy. But what the hell? Anybody who wanders around the world saying, “Hell yes, I’m from Texas, ” deserves whatever happens to him.
— Hunter S. Thompson, The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time
He talked about luck and fate and numbers coming up, yet he never ventured a nickel at the casinos because he knew the house had all the percentages. And beneath his pessimism, his bleak conviction that all the machinery was rigged against him, at the bottom of his soul was a faith that he was going to outwit it, that by carefully watching the signs he was going to know when to dodge and be spared. It was fatalism with a loophole, and all you had to do to make it work was never miss a sign. Survival by coordination, as it were. The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but to those who can see it coming and jump aside. Like a frog evading a shillelagh in a midnight marsh.
— Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary
It had been a bad trip … fast and wild in some moments, slow and dirty in others, but on balance it looked like a bummer. On my way back to San Francisco, I tried to compose a fitting epitaph. I wanted something original, but there was no escaping the echo of Mistah Kurtz’ final words from the heart of darkness: “The horror! The horror! … Exterminate all the brutes!
— Hunter S. Thompson, Hell’s Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga
I drink much less than most people think, and I think much more than most people would believe.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967
On the way down the hill we walked three abreast in the cobblestone street, drunk and laughing and talking like men who knew they would separate at dawn and travel to the far corners of the earth.
— Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary
Justice is not cheap in this country, and people who insist on it are usually either desperate or possessed by some private determination bordering on monomania.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Hell’s Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga
In the Carolinas they say “hill people” are different from “flatlands people, ” and as a native Kentuckian with more mountain than flatlands blood, I’m inclined to agree. This was one of the theories I’d been nursing all the way from San Francisco. Unlike Porterville or Hollister, Bass Lake was a mountain community … and if the old Appalachian pattern held, the people would be much slower to anger or panic, but absolutely without reason or mercy once the fat was in the fire. Like the Angels, they would tend to fall back in an emergency on their own native sense of justice — which bears only a primitive resemblance to anything written in law books. I thought the mountain types would be far more tolerant of the Angels’ noisy showboating, but — compared to their flatlands cousins — much quicker to retaliate in kind at the first evidence of physical insult or abuse.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Hell’s Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga
We cannot expect people to have respect for law and order until we teach respect to those we have entrusted to enforce those laws.
— Hunter S. Thompson
The only problem with the Angels’ new image was that the outlaws themselves didn’t understand it. It puzzled them to be treated as symbolic heroes by people with whom they had almost nothing in common. Yet they were gaining access to a whole reservoir of women, booze, drugs and new action — which they were eager to get their hands on, and symbolism be damned. But they could never get the hang of the role they were expected to play, and insisted on ad-libbing the lines. This fouled their channels of communication, which made them nervous … and after a brief whirl on the hipster party circuit, all but a few decided it was both cheaper and easier, in the long run, to buy their own booze and hustle a less complicated breed of pussy.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Hell’s Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga
We have become a Nazi monster in the eyes of the whole world—bullies and bastards who would rather kill than live peacefully. We are not just Whores for power and oil, but killer whores with hate and fear in our hearts.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century
This maybe the year when we finally come face to face with ourselves; finally just lay back and say it—that we are really just a nation of 220 million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms at all about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.
— Hunter S. Thompson, The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time
I am a child of the American Century, and I feel a genetic commitment to understanding why it happened, and why I take it so personally.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century
Richard Nixon has never been one of my favorite people, anyway. For years I’ve regarded his very existence as a monument to all the rancid genes and broken chromosomes that corrupt the possibilities of the American Dream; he was a foul caricature of himself, a man with no soul, no inner convictions, with the integrity of a hyena and the style of a poison toad.
— Hunter S. Thompson, The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time
All around us were people I had spent ten years avoiding–shapeless women in wool bathing suits, dull-eyed men with hairless legs and self-conscious laughs, all Americans, all fearsomely alike. These people should be kept at home, I thought; lock them in the basement of some goddamn Elks Club and keep them pacified with erotic movies; if they want a vacation, show them a foreign art film; and if they still aren’t satisfied, send them into the wilderness and run them with vicious dogs.
— Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary
The person who doesn’t scatter the morning dew will not comb grey hairs
— Hunter S. Thompson
The point is valid: the difference between survival and wipe-out in a physical crisis is nearly always a matter of conditioned reflexes.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Hell’s Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga
The main problem in any democracy is that crowd-pleasers are generally brainless swine who can go out on a stage & whup their supporters into an orgiastic frenzy—then go back to the office & sell every one of the poor bastards down the tube for a nickel apiece.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72
Just the other day the AP wire had a story about a man from Arkansas who entered some kind of contest and won a two-week vacation–all expenses paid–wherever he wanted to go. Any place in the world: Mongolia, Easter Island, the Turkish Riviera . . . but his choice was Salt Lake City, and that’s where he went. Is this man a registered voter? Has he come to grips with the issues? Has he bathed in the blood of the lamb?
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72
A totally befuddled voter may look at a Vote for McGovern sign and do just that.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72
It was necessary, we felt, to thoroughly terrify our opponents, so that even in hollow victory, they would learn to fear every sunrise …
— Hunter S. Thompson, Screwjack
From the very beginning Ihad felt a definite contact with Yeamon, a kind of tenuous understanding that talk is cheap in this league and that a man who knew what he was after had damn little time to find it, much less to sit back and explain himself.
— Hunter S. Thompson
Journalism, to me, is just another drug – a free ride to scenes I’d probably miss if I stayed straight. But I’m neither a chemist nor an editor; all I do is take the pill or the assignment and see what happens. Now and then I get a bad trip, but experience has made me more careful about what I buy… so if you have a good pill I’m open; I’ll try almost anything that hasn’t bitten me in the past.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist, 1968-1976
It never got weird enough for me.
— Hunter S. Thompson
I’ve always considered writing the most hateful kind of work. I suspect it’s a bit like fucking, which is only fun for amateurs. Old whores don’t do much giggling.
— Hunter S. Thompson, The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time
But I knew it was pure masturbation, because down in my gut I wanted nothing more than a clean bed and a bright room and something solid to call my own at least until I got tired of it. There was an awful suspicion in my mind that I’d finally gone over the hump, and the worst thing about it was that I didn’t feel tragic at all, but only weary, and sort of comfortably detatched.
— Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary
Every time I think of Tim Leary I get angry. He was a liar and a quack and a worse human being than Richard Nixon. For the last twenty-six years of his life he worked as an informant for the FBI and turned his friends into the police and betrayed the peace symbol he hid behind.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Ancient Gonzo Wisdom: Interviews with Hunter S. Thompson
Oral Roberts is a greed-crazed white-trash lunatic who should have been hung upside down from a telephone pole on the outskirts of Tulsa 44 years ago, before he somehow transmogrified into the money-sucking animal that he became when he discovered television.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Generation of Swine: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the ’80’s
I had come to regard him as a loner with no real past and a future so vague that there was no sense talking about it.
— Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary
As I said, to put our faith in tangible goals would seem to be, at best, unwise. So we do not strive to be firemen, we do not strive to be bankers, nor policemen, nor doctors. We strive to be ourselves. But don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mean that we can’t be firemen, bankers, or doctors — but that we must make the goal conform to the individual, rather than make the individual conform to the goal…In short, he has not dedicated his life to reaching a pre-defined goal, but he has rather chosen a way of life he knows he will enjoy. The goal is absolutely secondary: it is the functioning toward the goal which is important.
— Hunter S. Thompson
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers… and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls.Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Ignore that nightmare in the bathroom. Just another ugly refugee from the Love Generation, some doom-struck gimp who couldn’t handle the pressure. My attorney has never been able to accept the notion—often espoused by reformed drug abusers and especially popular among those on probation—that you can get a lot higher without drugs than with them. And neither have I, for that matter.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
How long can we maintain? I wonder. How long before one of us starts raving and jabbering at this boy? What will he think then? This same lonely desert was the last known home of the Manson family. Will he make that grim connection..
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
The trunk of the car looked like a mobile police narcotics lab. We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers . . . and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls . . . Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. And I knew we’d get into that rotten stuff pretty soon.
— Hunter S. Thompson
What sells, today, is whatever Fucks You Up – whatever short-circuits your brain and grounds it out for the longest possible time.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
About a week earlier I had finished a book (on the Hell’s Angels, scheduled this fall by Random House) and I felt that I needed about a week of total degeneration to cool out my system. To this end I went down to Big Sur and Monterery and filled my body with every variety of booze and drug available to modern man. For six or seven days I ran happily amok – spending money, sitting in baths, and futilely hunting wild boar with a .44 Magnum revolver. At one point I gave my car away to a man who paid $25 for the privilege of pushing it off a 400-foot cliff. – to Max Scherr editor, Berkley Barb 7/20/1966
— Hunter S. Thompson, The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967
Kill the body and the head will die.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Anything worth doing, is worth doing right.
— Hunter S. Thompson
The Edge… There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Hell’s Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga
Suddenly I was tired of Lotterman; he was a phony and he didn’t even know it. He was forever yapping about freedom of the press and keeping the paper going, but if he’d had a million dollars and all the freedom in the world he’d still put out a worthless newspaper because he wasn’t smart enough to put out a good one. He was just another noisy little punk in the great legion of punks who marched between the banners of bigger and better men. Freedom, Truth, Honour — you could rattle off a hundred such words and behind every one of them would gather a thousand punks, pompous little farts, waving the banner with one hand and reaching under the table with the other.I stood up. “Ed, ” I said using his name for the first time, “I believe I’ll quit.
— Hunter S. Thompson
They claimed no allegiance to any flag and valued no currency but luck and good contacts.
— Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary
There is not much mental distance between a feeling of having been screwed and the ethic of total retaliation, or at least the kind of random revenge that comes with outraging the public decency.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Hell’s Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga
Too weird to live, too rare to die!
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
The two keys to success as a sportswriter are: 1) A blind willingness to believe anything you’re told by the coaches, flacks, hustlers and other “official spokesmen” for the team-owners who provide the free booze … and: 2) A Roget’s Thesaurus, in order to avoid using the same verbs and adjectives twice in the same paragraph.Even a sports editor, for instance, might notice something wrong with a lead that said: “The precision-jack-hammer attack of the Miami Dolphins stomped the balls off the Washington Redskins today by stomping and hammering with one precise jack-thrust after another up the middle, mixed with pinpoint-precision passes into the flat and numerous hammer-jack stomps around both ends….
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72
When you’re asked to stay out of a bar you don’t just punch the owner–you come back with your army and tear the place down, destroy the whole edifice and everything it stands for. No compromise. If a man gets wise, mash his face. If a woman snubs you, rape her. This is the thinking, if not the reality, behind the whole Hell’s Angels act.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Hell’s Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga
OK for now. I enjoyed my quick, high-powered visit over there and look forward to a dead-game replay when I’m in better condition. Tell Hinckle he’d better take some liver exercises…and also to get braced for my wild cards, which don’t always mix well with grapefruit juice and burbon.- To Peter Collier 10/11/1967
— Hunter S. Thompson, The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967
Sala called for more drink and Sweep brought four rums, saying they were on the house. We thanked him and sat for another half hour, saying nothing. Down on the waterfront I could hear the slow clang of a ship’s bell as it eased against the pier, and somewhere in the city a motorcycle roared through the narrow streets, sending its echo up the hill to Calle O’Leary. Voices rose and fell in the house next door and the raucous sound of a jukebox came from a bar down the street. Sounds of a San Juan night, drifting across the city through layers of humid air; sounds of life and movement, people getting ready and people giving up, the sound of hope and the sound of hanging on, and behind them all, the quiet, deadly ticking of a thousand hungry clocks, the lonely sound of time passing in the long Caribbean night.
— Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary
On some days you get what you want, and on others, you get what you need.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century
The press is a gang of cruel faggots. Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits—a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
You will be flogged for being right and flogged for being wrong, and it hurts both ways–but it doesn’t hurt as much when you’re right.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Generation of Swine: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the ’80’s
We are drifting into some ugly parallels here, and if I’d written this kind of thing two years ago I’d pick up the New York Times and see myself mangled all over the Op-Ed page… And then beaten into a bloody coma the next evening by some hired thugs in an alley behind the National Press Building…..
— Hunter S. Thompson
The only way to write honestly about the scene is to be part of it. If there is one quick truism about psychedelic drugs, it is that anyone who tries to write about them without first-expierience is a fool and a fraud.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Hell’s Angels
To crank up a noisy bad stance out in a place like San Francisco and start yelling about “getting things done in Washington” is like sitting far back in the end zone seats at the Super Bowl and screaming at the Miami linebackers “Stop Duane Thomas!
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72
The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason.
— Hunter S. Thompson
Victory is a fleeting thing in the gambling business. Today’s winners are tomorrow’s blinking toads, dumb beasts with no hope.
— Hunter S. Thompson
I have long understood that losing always comes with the territory when you wander into the gambling business, just as getting crippled for life is an acceptable risk in the linebacker business. They both are extremely violent sports, and pain is part of the bargain. Buy the ticket, take the ride.
— Hunter S. Thompson
I have never believed much in luck, and my sense of humor has tended to walk on the dark side.
— Hunter S. Thompson
One of the most basic factors in sports is that winning becomes a habit, and losing is the same way. When failure starts to feel normal in your life or your work or even your darkest vices, you won’t have to go looking for trouble, because trouble will find you. Count on it.
— Hunter S. Thompson
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.
— Hunter S. Thompson
The best thing about the Kentucky Derby is that it is only two minutes long. It is the quickest event in sports, except for Sumo-wrestling & Mike Tyson fights. Maybe Drag-racing is quicker, but I have never been attracted to it.
— Hunter S. Thompson
I have learned, in my life and work as a sportswriter, that big-time Sports and big-time Politics are not so far apart in America. They are both a means to the same end, which is victory… And why not? Victory is good for you, and don’t let anybody tell you different.
— Hunter S. Thompson
February is always a bad month for TV sports. Football is gone, basketball is plodding along in the annual midseason doldrums, and baseball is not even mentioned.
— Hunter S. Thompson
The behavior of the crowd at Churchill Downs is like 100, 000 vicious Hyenas going berserk all at once in a space about the size of a 777 jet or the White House lawn.
— Hunter S. Thompson
I am a generous man, by nature, and far more trusting than I should be. Indeed. The real world is risky territory for people with generosity of spirit. Beware.
— Hunter S. Thompson
Nixon was a bad loser. He hated losing worse than death, and that is why I enjoyed him. We were both football fans, both addicts; and on some days, nothing else mattered.
— Hunter S. Thompson
The person who doesn’t scatter the morning dew will not comb gray hairs.
— Hunter S. Thompson
Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning.
— Hunter S. Thompson
As long as I’m learning something, I figure I’m OK – it’s a decent day.
— Hunter S. Thompson
It was the Law of the Sea, they said. Civilization ends at the waterline. Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top.
— Hunter S. Thompson
I learned a long time ago that reality was much weirder than anyone’s imagination.
— Hunter S. Thompson
The mind of America is seized by a fatal dry rot – and it’s only a question of time before all that the mind controls will run amuck in a frenzy of stupid, impotent fear.
— Hunter S. Thompson
Good news is rare these days, and every glittering ounce of it should be cherished and hoarded and worshipped and fondled like a priceless diamond.
— Hunter S. Thompson
No man is so foolish but he may sometimes give another good counsel, and no man so wise that he may not easily err if he takes no other counsel than his own. He that is taught only by himself has a fool for a master.
— Hunter S. Thompson
The only difference between the sane and the insane is that the sane have the power to lock up the insane.
— Hunter S. Thompson
Buy the ticket, take the ride.
— Hunter S. Thompson
I have warned many times about the guaranteed dangers of betting with your heart instead of your head – big darkness, soon come – but every once in a while you get a fair chance to have it both ways, and the annual NCAA basketball Tournament is one of them.
— Hunter S. Thompson
Marathon running, like golf, is a game for players, not winners. That is why Callaway sells golf clubs and Nike sells running shoes. But running is unique in that the world’s best racers are on the same course, at the same time, as amateurs, who have as much chance of winning as your average weekend warrior would scoring a touchdown in the NFL.
— Hunter S. Thompson
There are many harsh lessons to be learned from the gambling experience, but the harshest one of all is the difference between having Fun and being Smart.
— Hunter S. Thompson
There is no such thing as paranoia. Your worst fears can come true at any moment.
— Hunter S. Thompson
Truth is weirder than any fiction I’ve seen.
— Hunter S. Thompson
I think I’m one of the most patriotic people that I’ve ever encountered in America. I consider myself a bedrock patriot. I participate very actively in local politics, because my voice might be worthwhile. I participate in a meaningful way – not by donations; I work at it.
— Hunter S. Thompson
‘Crazy’ is a term of art; ‘Insane’ is a term of law. Remember that, and you will save yourself a lot of trouble.
— Hunter S. Thompson
Objective journalism is one of the main reasons that American politics has been allowed to be so corrupt for so long.
— Hunter S. Thompson
Not everybody is comfortable with the idea that politics is a guilty addiction. But it is.
— Hunter S. Thompson
Politics is the art of controlling your environment.
— Hunter S. Thompson
There might be some serious fun in politics.
— Hunter S. Thompson
Rude people will now & then ask me why I think I know so much about Politics. I tell them it’s because I’m Smart… But that is a lie: The real reason is because I’m an incurable Gambling addict.
— Hunter S. Thompson
America… just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.
— Hunter S. Thompson
Justice is expensive in America. There are no Free Passes… You might want to remember this, the next time you get careless and blow off a few Parking Tickets. They will come back to haunt you the next time you see a Cop car in your rear-view mirror.
— Hunter S. Thompson
Yes sir, I am a tortured man for all seasons, as they say, and I have powerful friends in high places. Birds sing where I walk, and children smile when they see me coming.
— Hunter S. Thompson
Football fans share a universal language that cuts across many cultures and many personality types. A serious football fan is never alone. We are legion, and football is often the only thing we have in common.
— Hunter S. Thompson
Freedom is something that dies unless it’s used.
— Hunter S. Thompson
English
Arabic
Chinese (Simplified)
Dutch
French
German
Italian
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish