Hunter S Thompson Quotes

A man who has blown all his options can't afford the luxury of changing his ways. He has to capitalize on whatever he has left, and he can't afford to admit - no matter how often he's reminded of it - that every day of his life takes him farther and farther down a blind alley ... ~ Hunter S. Thompson

I am surprised and embarrassed to be a part of the first American generation to leave the country in far worse shape than it was when we first came into it. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

There is nothing more helpless and irresponsible than a man in the depths of an ether binge. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

But after a while 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. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

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

The truth is that The Wild One -- despite an admittedly fictional treatment -- was an inspired piece of film journalism. Instead of institutionalizing common knowledge, in the style of Time, it told a story that was only beginning to happen and which was inevitably influenced by the film. It gave the outlaws a lasting, romance-glazed image of themselves, a coherent reflection that only a very few had been able to find in a mirror, and it quickly became the bike rider's answer to The Sun Also Rises. The image is not valid, but its wide acceptance can hardly be blamed on the movie. The Wild One was careful to distinguish between "good outlaws" and "bad outlaws," but the people who were most influenced chose to identify with Brando instead of Lee Marvin whose role as the villain was a lot more true to life than Brando's portrayal of the confused hero. They saw themselves as modern Robin Hoods ... virile, inarticulate brutes whose good instincts got warped somewhere in the struggle for self-expression and who spent the rest of their violent lives seeking revenge on a world that done them wrong when they were young and defenseless. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

Sportswriters are a rude and brainless subculture of fascist drunks, a gang of vicious monkeys jerking off in a zoo cage ... more disgusting by nature than maggots oozing out the carcass of a dead animal. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

In the meantime, I would drink, rest, and ponder the meaning of this mob. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

Las Vegas makes Reno seem like your friendly neighborhood grocery store. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

He knew who I was, at that time, because I had a reputation as a writer. I knew he was part of the Bush dynasty. But he was nothing, he offered nothing, and he promised nothing. He had no humor. He was insignificant in every way and consequently I didn't pay much attention to him. But when he passed out in my bathtub, then I noticed him. I'd been in another room, talking to the bright people. I had to have him taken away. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

Though I was careful never to mention it, I began to see a new dimension in everything that happened. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

An outlaw can be defined as somebody who lives outside the law, beyond the law and not necessarily against it. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

I was interested in [Hunter S. Thompson novels]. The rebel in me fell in love with it, and the artist in me was confused by it, and interested and turned on. Ever since, his work has meant different things to me, at different times, and I still get new meaning out of it and appreciate it, in a different way. His work is very visceral, and you can take from it what you want, in various moments of your life. ~ Amber Heard

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 off to forced conscious expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

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

I'm such a horror geek, comic geek and action figure geek. I'm inspired by so much - from Hunter S. Thompson and Quentin Tarantino to 'The Dark Knight' and 'Halloween'. Just show me something that doesn't suck, and I'm happy. ~ Corey Taylor

A man never stoops so low as when he rises to the challenge of politics. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

Poor Williams was left holding the civic bag; he had taken a gutsy stand, his image was all moxie . . . and on Monday night, when the Angels were finally gone, he had earned the leisure that enabled him to go out to the lakefront and gaze off in a proud wistful way, like Gatsby, at the green neon lights of the tavern across the water, where the others were counting their money. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

To infiltrate the infiltrators would be to accept the fate of all spies: As always, if you or any member of your organization is apprehended by the enemy, the Secretary will deny any Knowledge, etc. ... ~ Hunter S. Thompson

It occurred to me one evening, as I sat by myself in Al's patio, that a man can live on his wits and his balls for only so long. I'd been doing it for ten years and I had a feeling that my reserve was running low. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

No matter how much I wanted all those things that I needed money to buy, there was some devilish current pushing me off in another direction
toward anarchy and poverty and craziness. That maddening delusion that a man can lead a decent life without hiring himself out as a Judas Goat. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

Those of us that had been up all night were in no mood for coffee and donuts, we wanted strong drink. We were, after all, the cream of the national sporting press. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

It's a strange world. Some people get rich and others eat sh** and die. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

The slow-rising central horror of "Watergate" is not that it might grind down to the reluctant impeachment of a vengeful thug of a president whose entire political career has been a monument to the same kind of cheap shots and treachery he finally got nailed for, but that we might somehow fail to learn something from it. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

Even now, more than 30 years later, I still judge people on the basis of whether they voted for Jack Kennedy in 1960, or for Richard Nixon ... Those bastards are scarred forever, and I'm not. At least not for that. Hell, it was an honor to be able to vote against Richard Nixon - and it will be an honor on November 3 [1992] to vote against George Bush and everything he stands for. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

I was not proud of what I had learned but I never doubted that it was worth knowing. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

Yesterday's weirdness is tomorrow's reason why. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

I find that by putting things in writing I can understand them and see them a little more objectively ... For words are merely tools and if you use the right ones you can actually put even your life in order, if you don't lie to yourself and use the wrong words. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

It's 12 amyl nitrites (one box), in conjunction with as many beers as necessary. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

Have an objective to give your bender a theme. For instance, stalking and killing a wild pig with a bowie knife. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

Nixon had the unique ability to make his enemies seem honorable, and we developed a keen sense of fraternity. Some of my best friends have hated Nixon all their lives. My mother hates Nixon, my son hates Nixon, I hate Nixon, and this hatred has brought us together. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

Every now and then when your life gets complicated and the weasels start closing in, the only cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and then drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas ... with the music at top volume and at least a pint of ether. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

It's Your World...Pay Attention ~ Hunter S. Thompson

Hit him again, Jack! He's crazy! ~ Hunter S. Thompson

When the Pentagon feels free and even gleeful about killing anybody and Everybody who gets in the way of their vicious crusade for oil, the public soul of this country has changed forever, and professional sports is only a serenade for the death of the American dream. Mahalo. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

Not a wasted word. This has been a main point to my literary thinking all my life. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

Can I get to the bottle of Old Crow and mix it up with the remains of these ice fragments ... a cool drink for the freak? Give the gentleman something cool, dear, can't you see he's wired his brain to the water pump and his ears to the generator ... ~ Hunter S. Thompson

As far as I'm concerned, it's a damned shame that a field as potentially dynamic and vital as journalism should be overrun with dullards, bums, and hacks, hag-ridden with myopia, apathy, and complacence, and generally stuck in a bog of stagnant mediocrity. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

Autumn is always a time of Fear and Greed and Hoarding for the winter coming on. Debt collectors are active on old people and fleece the weak and helpless. They want to lay in enough cash to weather the known horrors of January and February. There is always a rash of kidnapping and abductions of schoolchildren in the football months. Preteens of both sexes are traditionally seized and grabbed off the streets by gangs of organized perverts who traditionally give them as Christmas gifts to each other to be personal sex slaves and playthings.

Most of these things are obviously Wrong and Evil and Ugly - but at least they are Traditional. They will happen. Your driveway will ice over, your furnace will blow up, and you will be rammed in traffic by an uninsured driver in a stolen car.

But what the hell? That's why we have Insurance, eh? And the Inevitability of these nightmares is what makes them so reassuring. Life will go on, for good or ill. But some things are forever, right? The structure may be a little Crooked, but the foundations are still strong and unshakable. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

I voted for Ralph Nader in 2000, but I will not make that mistake again. The joke is over for Nader. He was funny once, but now he belongs to the dead. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

Reality itself is too twisted. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

The towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble, along with all hopes for Peace in Our Time, in the United States or any other country. Make no mistake about it: We are At War now & with somebody & and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

I damn well intend to keep on living the way I think I should. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

You'd be surprised at the things people will do in order to get their names or pictures in the paper. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

All advice can only be a product of the man who gives it. ~ 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

For all his Caribbean clothes and his Madison Avenue manners, even with his surfside apartment and his Alfa Romeo roadster, there was so much Kansas in Sanderson that it was embarrassing to see him deny it. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

I remember being stunned at the New York skyline as I drove over this big freeway, coming across the flats in Seacaucus. All of a sudden it was looming up in front of me and I almost lost control of the car. I thought it was a vision. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

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

To them the appearance of the Hell's Angels must have seemed like a wonderful publicity stunt. In a nation of frightened dullards there is a sorry shortage of outlaws, and those few who make the grade are always welcome: Frank Sinatra, Alexander King, Elizabeth Taylor, Raoul Duke ... they have that extra "something". ~ Hunter S. Thompson

We have bigger things to brood on and enormous reasons for wallowing in terminal craziness until we finally hit bottom. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

Children are like TV sets. When they start acting weird, whack them across the head with a big rubber basketball shoe. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

Luck is a very thin wire between survival and disaster, and not many people can keep their balance on it. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

Animals don't hire lawyers ~ Hunter S. Thompson

There is nothing Modern about doing dumb things for dumb reasons. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

Not everybody is comfortable with the idea that politics is a guilty addiction. But it is. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

I felt a tremendous distance between myself and everything real. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

What the hell is the sense of trying to hold the Democratic party together, if it's really a party of expediency, something that's put together every four years? ~ Hunter S. Thompson

The downward spiral of Dumbness in America is about to hit a new low. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

A man who procrastinates in his choosing will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

One thing I have learned in my painful career as a gambler is that bragging when you get lucky and win a few games will plunge you into gloom and unacceptable beatings very soon. It happens every time. ~ 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

But from now on let's try to be careful when we're around people I know. You won't sketch them and I won't Mace them. We'll just try to relax and get drunk. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

If I followed my better instincts right now, I would put this typewriter in the Volvo and drive to the home of the nearest politician
any politician
and hurl the goddamn machine through his front window ... flush the bugger out with an act of lunatic violence then soak him down with mace and run him naked down Main Street in Aspen with a bell around his neck and black lumps all over his body from the jolts of a high powered "Ball Buster" cattle prod. ~ 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

When you write for a living and you can't do anything else, you know that sooner or later that the deadline is going to come screaming down on you like a goddamn banshee. There's no avoiding it ... So one day you just don't appear at the El Adobe bar anymore; you shut the door, paint the windows black, rent an electric typewriter and become the monster you always were - the writer. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

I was glad to be rid of him. He was one of those people who could go to New York and be "fascinating," but here in his own world he was just a cheap functionary, and a dull one at that. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

Sleep late, have fun, get wild, drink whiskey and drive fast on empty streets with nothing in mind but falling in love and not getting arrested. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

It is all well and good for children and acid freaks to still believe in Santa Claus - but it is still a profoundly morbid day for us working professionals. It is unsettling to know that one out of every twenty people you meet on Xmas will be dead this time next year Some people can accept this, and some can't. That is why God made whiskey, and also why Wild Turkey comes in $300 shaped canisters during most of the Christmas season. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

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

I harbor a secret urge to whack a salesman in the face, crack his teeth and put red bumps around his eyes. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

Call on God, but row away from the rocks. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

So there is more to their stance than a wistful yearning for acceptance in a world they never made. Their real motivation is an instinctive certainty as to what the score really is. They are out of the ballgame and they know it. Unlike the campus rebels, who with a minimum amount of effort will emerge from their struggle with a validated ticket to status, the outlaw motorcyclist views the future with the baleful eye of a man with no upward mobility at all. In a world increasingly geared to specialists, technicians and fantastically complicated machinery, the Hell's Angels are obvious losers and it bugs them. But instead of submitting quietly to their collective fate, they have made it the basis of a full-time social vendetta. They don't expect to win anything, but on the other hand, they have nothing to lose. If ~ Hunter S. Thompson

Hungry people have the cunning of wild beasts. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

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

I have always hated bowling, and I don't mind admitting it. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

Breakfast is the only meal of the day that I tend to view with the same kind of traditionalized reverence that most people associate with Lunch and Dinner. I like to eat breakfast alone, and almost never before noon; anybody with a terminally jangled lifestyle needs at least one psychic anchor every twenty-four hours, and mine is breakfast. In Hong Kong, Dallas or at home - and regardless of whether or not I have been to bed - breakfast is a personal ritual that can only be properly observed alone, and in a spirit of genuine excess. The food factor should always be massive: four Bloody Marys, two grapefruits, a pot of coffee, Rangoon crepes, a half-pound of either sausage, bacon, or corned beef hash with diced chiles, a Spanish omelette or eggs Benedict, a quart of milk, a chopped lemon for random seasoning, and something like a slice of Key lime pie, two margaritas, and six lines of the best cocaine for dessert… Right, and there should also be two or three newspapers, all mail and messages, a telephone, a notebook for planning the next twenty-four hours and at least one source of good music… All of which should be dealt with outside, in the warmth of a hot sun, and preferably stone naked. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

My blood is too thick for California: I have never been able to properly explain myself in this climate. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

There was no sense in blowing everything away for the sake of some violent ape I'd never even met. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

Every GOP administration since 1952 has let the Military-Industrial Complex loot the Treasury and plunge the nation into debt on the excuse of a wartime economic emergency. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

I agreed. By this time the drink was beginning to cut the acid and my hallucinations were down to a tolerable level. The room service waiter had a vaguely reptilian cast to his features, but I was no longer seeing huge pterodactyls lumbering around the corridors in pools of fresh blood. The only problem now was a gigantic neon sign outside the window, blocking our view of the mountains
millions of colored balls running around a very complicated track, strange symbols & filigree, giving off a loud hum ...
"Look outside," I said.
"Why?"
"There's a big ... machine in the sky, ... some kind of electric snake ... coming straight at us."
"Shoot it," said my attorney.
"Not yet," I said. "I want to study its habits. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

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

I think I'm going to have to get a flying license very soon, and maybe one of those Lear jets. It beats motorcycles all to hell. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

Richard Nixon was a criminally insane Monster - Bill Clinton is a black-hearted Swine of a friend. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

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

I was thinking; my mind was running at top speed, scanning and sorting my options. They ranged all the way from Dumb and Dangerous to Crazy, Evil, and utterly wrong from the start. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

It was a Different Time. People were Friendly. We trusted each other. Hell, you could afford to get mixed up with wild strangers in those days
without fearing for your life, or your eyes, or your organs, or all of your money, or even getting locked up in prison forever. There was a sense of possibility. People were not so afraid, as they are now. You could run around naked without getting shot. You could check into a roadside motel on the outskirts of Ely or Winnemucca or Elko where you were lost in a midnight rainstorm
and nobody called the police on you, just to check out your credit and your employment history and your medical records and how many parking tickets you owed in California. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

I feel trapped if I know I can't kill myself at anytime ~ Hunter S. Thompson

But why not float if you have no goal? That is another question. It is unquestionably better to enjoy the floating than to swim in uncertainty. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

It was the kind of town that made you feel like Humphrey Bogart: you came in on a bumpy little plane, and, for some mysterious reason, got a private room with balcony overlooking the town and the harbor; then you sat there and drank until something happened. ~ 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

Anything that gets your blood racing is probably worth doing. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

Don't take any guff from these swine. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

Stay naked as much as possible, but do not impose your orgiastic will on others. Don't have sex in the lobby - it's usually awkward. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

I felt a strange tightness coming over me, and I reacted instinctively – for the first time in a long, long while – by slipping my notebook into my belt and reaching down to take off my watch. The first thing to go in a street fight is your watch, and once you've lost a few, you develop a certain instinct that lets you know when it's time to get the thing off your wrist and into a safe pocket. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

This is the fast lane, folks ... and some of us like it here. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

And in fact the only way I can deal with this eerie situation at all is to make a conscious decision that I have already lived and finished the life I planned to live - and everything from now on will be A New Life, a different thing, a gig that ends tonight and starts tomorrow morning. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

McGovern is the only major candidate - including Lindsay and Muskie - who invariably gives a straight answer when people raise these questions. He lines out the painful truth, and his reward has been just about the same as that of any other politician who insists on telling the truth: He is mocked, vilified, ignored, and abandoned as a hopeless loser by even his good old buddies like Harold Hughes. On ~ Hunter S. Thompson

In the argot of the cycle world the Harley is a "hog," and the outlaw bike is a "chopped hog. ~ 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