Hunter S. Thompson famous quotes

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Music #Sports #Hunting

"Drugs" are not necessarily narcotics. The narcotic is one type of drug and coffee is a drug... booze is a drug... many drugs.... They're all around us.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Coffee #Drug #Type

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

#Gun #Two #America

I think it might be better to have the President sort of like the King of England - or the Queen - and have the real business of the presidency conducted by ... a city manager-type, a Prime Minister, somebody who's directly answerable to Congress, rather than a person who moves all his friends into the White House and does whatever he wants for four years.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Kings #Queens #Real

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

#Heart #Mind #Looks

If you have half a story and you don't know the rest, you use what you have to pry the rest out of someone.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Stories #Use #Half

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

#America #Spirals #Lows

"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

#Keys #Differences #Campaigns

For a loser, Vegas is the meanest town on earth.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Vegas #Earth #Towns

I've been studying drugs for years.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Years #Drug #Study

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

#Life #Death #Suicide

It's the difference between watching a football game between two teams you don't care about, and watching a game where you have some kind of personal identity with one of the teams, if only a huge bet.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Football #Team #Games

Life has become immeasurably better since I have been forced to stop taking it seriously.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Life #Fun #Epic

It's much more fun to run a political campaign than it is to be the candidate.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Running #Fun #Political

It is not necessary to accept the choices handed down to you by life as you know it.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Choices #Conformity #Accepting

You almost have to be a rock star to generate the kind of fever you need to survive in American politics.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Stars #Rocks #Needs

For every moment of triumph, for every instance of beauty, many souls must be trampled.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Beauty #Soul #Triumph

The McGovern/McCarthy type candidacies have disappointed too many people, because of a disillusionment with the candidates themselves.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#People #Type #Disillusionment

Writing is the flip side of sex - it's good only when it's over.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Sex #Writing #Flip

I think you either have to have a very strong decisive person at the top or else a really brilliant staff command.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Strong #Thinking #Brilliant

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

#Humor #Rocks

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

#Party #Years #Trying

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

#Men #Obvious #Rhythm

and he would probably not agree with my conviction that a sense of humor is the main measure of sanity. But who can say for sure? Humor is a very private thing.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Sense Of Humor #Sanity #Conviction

Graffiti is beautiful; like a brick in the face of a cop.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Beautiful #Graffiti #Faces

Nixon was a professional politician, and I despised everything he stood for -- but if he were running for president this year against the evil Bush-Cheney gang, I would happily vote for him.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Running #Years #Evil

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

#Political #Energy #Campaigns

Sex without love is as hollow and ridiculous as love without sex.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Sex #Epic #Love Is

There's no point in getting into politics at all unless you plan to lash things around.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Lashes #Plans

Goddammit. Yeah, I have. First, there's a huge difference between being arrested and being guilty. Second, see, the law changes and I don't. How I stand vis-à-vis the law at any given moment depends on the law. The law can change from state to state, from nation to nation, from city to city. I guess I have to go by a higher law. How's that? Yeah, I consider myself a road man for the lords of karma.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Karma #Men #Law

Any candidate who'd offered a real possibility of an alternative to Nixon - someone with a different concept of the presidency - could have challenged him and come very close to beating him.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Real #Different #Alternatives

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

#Procrastination #Men #Choices

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

#People #Reason #Liberalism

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

#Life #Epic #Mind

Freedom is something that dies unless it's used.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Epic #Used

I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Funny #Truth #Epic

Buy the ticket, take the ride.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Fun #Scrapbooking #Tickets

The only difference between the sane and the insane is that the sane have the power to lock up the insane.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Differences #Insane #Locks

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

#Funny Life #People #Luck

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

#Lanes #Folks

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

#Stupid #Philosophical #Thought Provoking

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

#Ocean #Civilization #Ties

'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

#Art #Crazy #Law

No, this is not a good town for psychedelic drugs. Reality itself is too twisted.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Reality #Drug #Towns

I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Hate #Drinking #Beer

Truth is weirder than any fiction I've seen.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Truth #Fiction #Truth Is

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

#Inspirational #Crazy #Epic

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

#Morning #Eerie #Decision

It was one of those fine little love stories that can make you smile in your sleep at night.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Sleep #Night #Make You Smile

God's mercy on you degenerate swine.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Degenerates #Mercy #Swine

I miss Nixon. Compared to these Nazis we have in the White House now, Richard Nixon was a flaming liberal.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#White #House #Missing

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

#Epic #Race #Phrases

George McGovern, for all his mistakes... understands what a fantastic monument to all the best instincts of the human race this country might have been, if we could have kept it out of the hands of greedy little hustlers like Richard Nixon,
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Country #Mistake #Race

Walk tall, kick ass, learn to speak Arabic, love music and never forget you come from a long line of truth seekers, lovers and warriors.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Warrior #Long #Design

There is always room for losers in the football business. They are the mother's milk of gambling, and why not? Somebody has to do it, or there won't be any winners.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Football #Mother #Gambling

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

#Funny #Drug #Ugly

Sex, drugs, and insanity have always worked for me, but I wouldn't recommend them for everyone.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Sex #Hippie #Insanity

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

#Order #Names #People

I understand that fear is my friend, but not always. Never turn your back on Fear. It should always be in front of you, like a thing that might have to be killed. My father taught me that, along with a few other things that have kept my life interesting.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Father #Epic #Interesting

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

#Running #Inspiration #Believe

It never got weird enough for me.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Enough

It was like falling down an elevator shaft and landing in a pool full of mermaids.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Fall #Mermaid #Pool

The highways are crowded with people who drive as if their sole purpose in getting behind the wheel is to avenge every wrong done them by man, beast or fate. The only thing that keeps them in line is their fear of death, jail and lawsuits.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Fate #Men #Jail

Weird heroes and mould-breaking champions exist as living proof to those who need it that the tyranny of 'the rat race' is not yet final.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Hero #Race #Champion

Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Journalism #Truth Is #Commodity

On my tombstone they will carve, "IT NEVER GOT FAST ENOUGH FOR ME.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Tombstone #Enough

All my life, my heart has sought a thing I cannot name. Remembered line from a long- forgotten poem
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Heart #Names #Long

If we get chased out of Iraq with our tail between our legs, that will be the fifth consecutive Third-world country with no hint of a Navy or an Air Force to have whipped us in the past 40 years.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Country #Past #Air

We are all wired into a survival trip, now.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Survival

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

#Ideas #Long #Car

You won't find reasonable men on the tops of tall mountains.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Men #Mountain

Some people will tell you that slow is good – but I’m here to tell you that fast is better. I’ve always believed this, in spite of the trouble it’s caused me. Being shot out of a cannon will always be better than being squeezed out of a tube. That is why God made fast motorcycles, Bubba…
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#People #Motorcycle #Trouble

I wanted to take off all my clothes and never wear them again.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Clothes #Wanted

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

#Writing #Thinking

Paranoia is just another mask for ignorance.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Ignorance #Paranoia #Mask

Paranoia is just another mask for ignorance. The truth, when you finally chase it down is almost always far worse than your darkest visions and fears
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Ignorance #Vision #Paranoia

If you can't make yourself understood by your friends, you'll be in trouble when your enemies come for you.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Enemy #Trouble #Understood

Myths and legends die hard in America. We love them for the extra dimension they provide, the illusion of near-infinite possibility to erase the narrow confines of most men's reality. Weird heroes and mould-breaking champions exist as living proof to those who need it that the tyranny of 'the rat race' is not yet final.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Love #Hero #Reality

Faster, Faster, until the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of death.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Drug #Overcoming #Thrill

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

#Reason #Craziness #Wallowing

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

#Men #Luxury #Matter

Being shot out of a cannon will always be better than being squeezed out of a tube. That is why God made fast motorcycles, Bubba....
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Motorcycle #Made #Shots

1) Never trust a cop in a raincoat. 2) Beware of enthusiasm and of love, both are temporary and quick to sway. 3) If asked if you care about the world's problems, look deep into the eyes of he who asks, he will never ask you again. 4) Never give your real name. 5) If ever asked to look at yourself, don't look. 6) Never do anything the person standing in front of you can't understand. 7) Never create anything, it will be misinterpreted, it will chain you and follow you for the rest of your life.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Real #Eye #Names

The importance of Liking Yourself is a notion that fell heavily out of favor during the coptic, anti-ego frenzy of the Acid Era--but nobody guessed back then that the experiment might churn up this kind of hangover: a whole subculture of frightened illiterates with no faith in anything.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Hangover #Ego #Might

You can't hoard fun. It has no shelf life.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Fun #Shelves #Shelf Life

It drops us into a vigorous current, a constant state of misguided control. The doomed generation takes a final step forward, ignoring all the signs that state the obvious, and leaps into a trip no drug known to man could ever encompass.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Men #Drug #Steps

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

#Law #Outlaw

Turn the goddam music up! My heart feels like an alligator!
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Heart #Alligators #Turns

Morality is temporary, wisdom is permanent.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Life #Morality #Temporary

I'm a relatively respectable citizen. Multiple felon perhaps, but certainly not dangerous.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Epic #Citizens #Felons

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

#Inspirational #Motivational #I Hate You

In a nation ruled by swine, all pigs are upward mobile.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Fun #Pigs #Swine

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

#Falling In Love #Fun #Real

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.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Coffee #Eggs #Two

There is an ancient Celtic axiom that says 'Good people drink good beer.' Which is true, then as now. Just look around you in any public barroom and you will quickly see: Bad people drink bad beer. Think about it.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Beer #Thinking #People

As things stand now, I am going to be a writer. I'm not sure that I'm going to be a good one or even a self-supporting one, but until the dark thumb of fate presses me to the dust and says 'you are nothing', I will be a writer.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Writing #Dark #Fate

In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Stupidity #Thieves #Finals

I have no taste for either poverty or honest labor, so writing is the only recourse left for me
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Money #Writing #Epic

I have always loved marijuana. It has been a source of joy and comfort to me for many years. And I still think of it as a basic staple of life, along with beer and ice and grapefruits - and millions of Americans agree with me.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#Beer #Marijuana #Thinking

All we have to do is get out and vote, while it's still legal, and we will wash those crooked warmongers out of the White House.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

#White #Voting #House