Top 100 Hunter S. Thompson Quotes
#1. By any accepted standard, I have had more than nine lives. I counted them up once, and there were 13 times I almost and maybe should have died.
Hunter S. Thompson
#2. 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
#3. All my life, my heart has sought a thing I cannot name.
Remembered line from a long-
forgotten poem
Hunter S. Thompson
#4. She was wearing the same clothes, but now she looked haggard and dirty. The delicate illusions that get us through life can only stand so much strain.
Hunter S. Thompson
#5. Bill Clinton does not inhale marijuana, right? You bet. Like I chew on LSD but I don't swallow it.'
Hunter S. Thompson
#7. All the blood is drained out of democracy - it dies - when only half the population votes.
Hunter S. Thompson
#8. '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
#9. A group photo of the top ten journalists in America on any given day would be a monument to human ugliness.
Hunter S. Thompson
#10. I'm bound to go to heaven because I've already served my time in hell.
Hunter S. Thompson
#11. Did you see Bush on TV, trying to debate? Jesus, he talked like a donkey with no brains at all ... It was pitiful ... I almost felt sorry for him, until I heard someone call him 'Mr. President,' and then I felt ashamed.
Hunter S. Thompson
#12. It was like falling down an elevator shaft and landing in a pool full of mermaids.
Hunter S. Thompson
#13. The regrets I have are so minor. You know, would I leave my Keith Richards hat, with the silver skull on it, on the stool at the coffee shop at LaGuardia? I wouldn't do that again. But overall, no, I don't have any regrets.
Hunter S. Thompson
#14. The prevailing quality of life in America
by any accepted methods of measuring
was unarguably freer and more politically open under Nixon than it is today in this evil year of Our Lord 2002.
Hunter S. Thompson
#15. Though I was careful never to mention it, I began to see a new dimension in everything that happened.
Hunter S. Thompson
#16. 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
#17. 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
#19. The only difference between the sane and the insane is that the sane have the power to lock up the insane.
Hunter S. Thompson
#20. Ah, that we lack the courage of our romantic convictions; and thereby miss the wine of life, forgoing the very thing that makes living worthwhile.
Hunter S. Thompson
#21. Nearly everyone who has ridden a bike for any length of time will agree. The highways are crowded with people who drive as if their sole purpose in getting behind the wheel is to avenge every wrong ever done them by man, beast or fate.
Hunter S. Thompson
#23. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone.
Hunter S. Thompson
#24. To make a point of declaring friendship is to cheapen it. For men's emotions are very rarely put into words successfully.
Hunter S. Thompson
#25. The world is still a weird place, despite my efforts to make clear and perfect sense of it.
Hunter S. Thompson
#26. 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
#29. We are going to Court, Andrew. We are champions! We will crush them like cheap roaches! TODAY'S PIG IS TOMORROW'S BACON!
Hunter S. Thompson
#30. The McGovern/McCarthy type candidacies have disappointed too many people, because of a disillusionment with the candidates themselves.
Hunter S. Thompson
#33. 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
#34. There was madness in any direction, at any hour. You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning.
Hunter S. Thompson
#35. 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
#37. They command a fascination, however reluctant, that borders on psychic masturbation.
Hunter S. Thompson
#38. Not a wasted word. This has been a main point to my literary thinking all my life.
Hunter S. Thompson
#39. The room was very quiet. I walked over to the TV set and turned it on to a dead channel-white noise at maximum decibels, a fine sound for sleeping, a powerful continuous hiss to drown out everything strange.
Hunter S. Thompson
#40. That was always the difference between Muhammad Ali and the rest of us. He came, he saw, and if he didn't entirely conquer - he came as close as anybody we are likely to see in the lifetime of this doomed generation.
Hunter S. Thompson
#41. He could shake your hand and stab you in the back at the same time.
Hunter S. Thompson
#42. No, it was too much. The line between madness and masochism was already hazy; the time had come to pull back ... to retire, hunker down, back off and "cop out," as it were. Why not? in every gig like this, there comes a time to either cut your losses or consolidate your winnings - whichever fits.
Hunter S. Thompson
#43. All golfers fear the one-iron. It has no angle, no loft. The one-iron is a confidence-crusher, a fear trip, an almost guarantee of shame, failure, dumbness and humiliation if you ever use it in public.
Hunter S. Thompson
#44. The downward spiral of Dumbness in America is about to hit a new low.
Hunter S. Thompson
#46. I am more than just a serious basketball fan. I am a life-long addict. I was addicted from birth, in fact, because I was born in Kentucky and I learned, early on, that Habitual Domination was a natural way of life.
Hunter S. Thompson
#47. It was dangerous lunacy, but it was also the kind of thing a real connoisseur of edge-work could make an argument for.
Hunter S. Thompson
#48. There is no such thing as paranoia. Your worst fears can come true at any moment.
Hunter S. Thompson
#49. Women are terrified of being raped, but somewhere in the back of the womb there is one rebellious nerve end that tingles with curiosity whenever the word is mentioned.
Hunter S. Thompson
#50. Gonzo journalism is a style of reporting based on William Faulkner's idea that the best fiction is far more true than any kind of journalism ...
Hunter S. Thompson
#52. ROSS PEROT was the best thing that happened in American politics since Richard Nixon acquired a taste for gin. In both cases, the political dialogue of the day was enriched by spontaneous gibberish that entertained the wrong people and made the right ones question their faith.
Hunter S. Thompson
#53. About to quit." "Why?" He laughed. "Everybody quits - you'll quit. Nobody worth a shit can work here.
Hunter S. Thompson
#54. The first time I managed to pick up a basketball I knew I was destined to lead the UK to another National championship ... Even now, so many years later, I still believe Kentucky will go undefeated in March & win everything.
Hunter S. Thompson
#55. Watching TV becomes a full-time job when you can scan 200 channels all day and all night and still have the option of punching Night Dreams into the video machine, if the rest of the world seems dull.
Hunter S. Thompson
#56. My blood is too thick for California: I have never been able to properly explain myself in this climate.
Hunter S. Thompson
#57. ...if that Watergate case ever gets into court, he might get very nervous.
Hunter S. Thompson
#58. I haven't found a drug yet that can get you anywhere near as high as a sitting at a desk writing, trying to imagine a story no matter how bizarre it is, [or] going out and getting into the weirdness of reality and doing a little time on the Proud Highway.
Hunter S. Thompson
#59. 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
#60. 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
#61. I was never trying, necessarily, to be an outlaw. It was just the place in which I found myself.
Hunter S. Thompson
#62. I beat him like a mad dog with mange every time I got a chance, and I am proud of it. He was scum.
Hunter S. Thompson
#63. Let us toast to animal pleasures, to escapism, to rain on the roof and instant coffee, to unemployment insurance and library cards, to absinthe and good-hearted landlords, to music and warm bodies and contraceptives ... and to the "good life", whatever it is and wherever it happens to be.
Hunter S. Thompson
#64. All energy flows according to the whims of the great Magnet. What a fool I was to defy him.
Hunter S. Thompson
#67. It was obvious that he was a man who marched through life to the rhythms of some drum I would never hear.
Hunter S. Thompson
#68. 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
#70. Jesus Creeping God! Is there a priest in this tavern? I want to confess! I'm a fucking sinner! Venal, mortal, carnal, major, minor - however you want to call it, Lord ... I'm guilty.
Hunter S. Thompson
#71. I am not a yachting person, by nature, but I have just enough experience on the sea under sail to feel a certain nostalgia for it when I see a big white racing yacht heeled over at cruising speed on the ocean, and I can still tie a mean bowline knot on just about anything in less than 10 seconds.
Hunter S. Thompson
#72. "Perceive" is the word that became in the '72 campaign what "charisma" was for the 1960, '64 and even the '68 campaigns. "Perceive" is the new key word. When you say perceive you imply the difference between what the candidate is and the way the public or the voters see him.
Hunter S. Thompson
#73. Young George spent more money on one day of his Inauguration Ceremonies than Richard Nixon did on his whole Campaign in 1972 - and Nixon was crucified as a Criminal Spendthrift with the ethics of a snake.
Hunter S. Thompson
#74. Local reporters going out on the press-bus each day for the carefully staged "player interviews," that Dolphin tackle Manny Fernandez described as "like going to the dentist every day to have the same tooth filled,
Hunter S. Thompson
#75. This is one of the hallmarks of Vegas hospitality. The only bedrock rule is Don't Burn the Locals. Beyond that, nobody cares. They would rather not know. If Charlie Manson checked into the Sahara tomorrow morning, nobody would hassle him as long as he tipped big.
Hunter S. Thompson
#76. Our vibrations were getting nasty. But why? Was there no communication in this car? Had we deteriorated to the level of dumb beasts?
Hunter S. Thompson
#77. Those were the good mornings, when the sun was hot and the air was quick and promising, when the Real Business seemed right on the verge of happening and I felt that if I went just a little faster I might overtake that bright and fleeting thing that was always just ahead.
Hunter S. Thompson
#78. Jesus! Did I SAY that? Or just think it? Was I talking? Did they hear me? I glanced over at my attorney, but he seemed oblivious ...
Hunter S. Thompson
#79. The massive, frustrated energies of a mainly young, disillusioned electorate that has long since abandoned the idea that we all have a duty to vote. This is like being told you have a duty to buy a new car, but you have to choose immediately between a Ford and a Chevy.
Hunter S. Thompson
#80. There's a terrible danger in voting for the lesser of two evils because the parties can set it up that way.
Hunter S. Thompson
#81. Sane is rich and powerful. Insane is wrong and poor and weak. The rich are free, the poor are put in cages. Res Ipsa Loquitur, amen. Mahalo.
Hunter S. Thompson
#83. It's a strange world. Some people get rich and others eat sh** and die.
Hunter S. Thompson
#84. I have no taste for either poverty or honest labor, so writing is the only recourse left for me.
Hunter S. Thompson
#86. The most consistent and ultimately damaging failure of political journalism in America (is that it) has its roots in the clubby/cocktail personal relationships that inevitably develop between politicians and journalists.
Hunter S. Thompson
#88. I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me.
Hunter S. Thompson
#90. You'd be surprised at the things people will do in order to get their names or pictures in the paper.
Hunter S. Thompson
#91. Of all the men that have run for president in the twentieth century, only George McGovern truly understood what a monument America could be to the human race.
Hunter S. Thompson
#92. If Sunday is the Lord's day, then Saturday belongs to the Devil. It is the only night of the week when he gives out Free passes to the Late show at the Too Much Fun Club.
Hunter S. Thompson
#93. If we start electing presidents on the basis of their sexual purity, some real monsters will get into the White House.
Hunter S. Thompson
#94. 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
#95. 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
#96. It was one of those fine little love stories that can make you smile in your sleep at night.
Hunter S. Thompson
#97. There is probably some long-standing "rule" among writers, journalists, and other word-mongers that says: "When you start stealing from your own work you're in bad trouble." And it may be true.
Hunter S. Thompson
#98. If you consider the great journalists in history, you don't see too many objective journalists on that list.
Hunter S. Thompson
#99. Any kind of political campaign that taps the kind of energy that nothing else can reach would generate a tremendous high for everybody involved in it.
Hunter S. Thompson
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