Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005), an influential American journalist and author, gained fame with “Hell’s Angels” (1967), immersing himself with the motorcycle club for a firsthand account. Pioneering “Gonzo” journalism, he made himself a central figure in narratives. Best known for “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” (1972), exploring the aftermath of the 1960s counterculture, it was twice adapted into films. Thompson ran for Pitkin County sheriff in 1970 on the Freak Power ticket and despised Richard Nixon, covering George McGovern’s 1972 campaign. His output declined in the mid-1970s, grappling with fame’s consequences. He continued writing for various outlets until his suicide at 67, known for his substance use, love of firearms, and iconoclastic contempt for authority. Hari Kunzru identified Thompson as an American moralist who exposed societal ugliness through his often unorthodox methods.
Hunter S. Thompson Quotes
1. “A man who procrastinates in his choosing will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
2. “Buy the ticket, take the ride.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
3. “Anything worth doing is worth doing well.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
4. “Faster, Faster, until the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of death.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
5. “Anything that gets your blood racing is probably worth doing.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
6. “Beware of looking for goals: look for a way of life. Decide how you want to live and then see what you can do to make a living WITHIN that way of life.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
7. “Life has become immeasurably better since I have been forced to stop taking it seriously.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
8. “Too weird to live, too rare to die!”
— Hunter S. Thompson
9. “Life is beautiful and living is pain.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
10. “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
11. “Sleep late, have fun, get wild, drink whisky, and drive fast on empty streets with nothing in mind but falling in love and not getting arrested.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
12. “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
13. “You can’t miss what you never had.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
14. “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
15. “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
16. “Never turn your back on fear. It should always be in front of you, like a thing that might have to be killed.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
17. “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
18. “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
19. “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.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
20. “Hope rises and dreams flicker and die. Love plans for tomorrow and loneliness think of yesterday. Life is beautiful and living is pain.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
21. “Call on God, but row away from the rocks.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
22. “Freedom is something that dies unless it’s used.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
23. “There is no story unless you’ve written it.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
24. “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
25. “The possibility of physical and mental collapse is now very real. No sympathy for the Devil, keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
26. “Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming, “Wow what a ride!”
— Hunter S. Thompson
27. “Sex without love is as hollow and ridiculous as love without sex.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
28. “I will fight for your right to be weird- just as I know you will fight for mine.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
29. “Human beings are the only creatures on earth that claim a God and the only thing that behaves like it hasn’t got one.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
30. “It never got weird enough for me.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
31. “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
32. “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
33. “Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run, but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
34. “If you get people asking the wrong questions, you don’t have to worry about the answers.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
35. “You won’t find reasonable men on the tops of tall mountains.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
36. “As long as I’m learning something, I figure I’m OK – it’s a decent day.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
37. “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
38. “Journalism, to me, is just another drug – a free ride to scenes I’d probably miss if I stayed straight.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
39. “Kill the body and the head will die.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
40. “It is not necessary to accept the choices handed down to you by life as you know it.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
41. “For every moment of triumph, for every instance of beauty, many souls must be trampled.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
42. “There is no such thing as paranoia. Your worst fears can come true at any moment.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
43. “Some may never live, but the crazy never die.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
44. “We must ride this strange torpedo out until the end.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
45. “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
46. “Good people drink good beer.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
47. “As you were, I was. As I am, you will be.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
48. “I would feel real trapped in this life if I didn’t know I could commit suicide at any time.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
49. “Turn the goddam music up! My heart feels like an alligator!”
— Hunter S. Thompson
50. “The only difference between the sane and the insane is that the sane have the power to lock up the insane.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
51. “Objective journalism is one of the main reasons that American politics has been allowed to be so corrupt for so long.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
52. “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.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
53. “All my life, my heart has sought a thing I cannot name. Remembered line from a long-forgotten poem.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
54. “I learned a long time ago that reality was much weirder than anyone’s imagination.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
55. “All energy flows according to the whims of the great Magnet. What a fool I was to defy him.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
56. “Relax – This won’t hurt.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
57. “In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
58. “The downward spiral of Dumbness in America is about to hit a new low.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
59. “On some days you get what you want, and on others, you get what you need.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
60. “Morality is temporary, wisdom is permanent.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
61. “A man can live on his wits and his balls for only so long.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
62. “Just sick enough to be totally confident.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
63. “The world is still a weird place, despite my efforts to make clear and perfect sense of it.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
64. “The brutal reality of politics would be probably intolerable without drugs.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
65. “As I see it then, the formula runs something like this: a man must choose a path which will let his ABILITIES function at maximum efficiency toward the gratification of his DESIRES.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
66. “Politics is the art of controlling your environment.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
67. “I was not proud of what I had learned but I never doubted that it was worth knowing.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
68. “Luck is a very thin wire between survival and disaster, and not many people can keep their balance on it.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
69. “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
70. “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
71. “No, this is not a good town for psychedelic drugs. Reality itself is too twisted.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
72. “Weird behavior is natural in smart children like curiosity is to a kitten.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
73. “There are always risks in challenging excessive police power, but the risks of not challenging it are more dangerous, even fatal.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
74. “Remember this, folks – I am a Hillbilly, and I don’t always Bet the same way I talk. Good advice is one thing, but smart gambling is quite another.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
75. “Poor bastard. Wait ’till he sees the bats.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
76. “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
77. “We are all wired into a survival trip, now.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
78. “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
79. “Nixon represents that dark, venal, and incurably violent side of the American character almost every other country in the world has learned to fear and despise.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
80. “It gave me a strange feeling, and the rest of that night I didn’t say much, but merely sat there and drank, trying to decide if I was getting older and wiser, or just plain old.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
81. “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
82. “Yesterday’s weirdness is tomorrow’s reason why.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
83. “I was never trying, necessarily, to be an outlaw. It was just the place in which I found myself.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
84. “I feel trapped if I know I can’t kill myself at any time.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
85. “I felt a tremendous distance between myself and everything real.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
86. “It will be a Religious War, a sort of Christian Jihad, fueled by religious hatred and led by merciless fanatics on both sides. It will be guerilla warfare on a global scale, with no front lines and no identifiable enemy.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
87. “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
88. “All the blood is drained out of democracy – it dies – when only half the population votes.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
89. “We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
90. “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
91. “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
92. “I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
93. “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
94. “Old God sure was in a good mood when he made this place.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
95. “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
96. “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
97. “God’s mercy on you degenerate swine.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
98. “Beware of looking for goals: look for a way of life.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
99. “What passed for society was a loud, giddy whirl of thieves and pretentious hustlers, a dull sideshow full of quacks and clowns and philistines with gimp mentalities.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
100. “Richard Nixon was an evil man – evil in a way that only those who believe in the physical reality of the Devil can understand it. He was utterly without ethics or morals or any bedrock sense of decency.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
101. “With the truth so dull and depressing, the only working alternative is wild bursts of madness and filigree.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
102. “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
103. “I am a road man for the lords of karma.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
104. “You can turn your back on a person, but never turn your back on a drug, especially when it’s waving a razor-sharp hunting knife in your eye.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
105. “No one holds command over me. No man. No god. No Prince. What is a claim of age for ones who are immortal? What is a claim of power for ones who defy death? Call your damnable hunt. We shall see whom I drag screaming to hell with me.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
106. “At the top of the mountain, we are all snow leopards.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
107. “Still humping the American Dream.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
108. “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
109. “Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
110. “The association of motorcycles with LSD is no accident of publicity. They are both a means to an end, to the place of definitions.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
111. “We can’t stop here, this is bat country!”
— Hunter S. Thompson
112. “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
113. “I was never idle long enough to do much thinking, but I felt somehow that my instincts were right.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
114. “Have an objective to give your bender a theme. For instance, stalking and killing a wild pig with a bowie knife.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
115. “Fiction is based on reality unless you’re a fairy-tale artist, you have to get your knowledge of life from somewhere. You have to know the material you’re writing about before you alter it.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
116. “These things happen. One day you run everything, and the next day you run like a dog.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
117. “I have no taste for either poverty or honest labor, so writing is the only recourse left for me.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
118. “I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
119. “Those of us that had been up all night were in no mood for coffee and donuts, we wanted strong drinks. We were, after all, the cream of the national sporting press.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
120. “It was one of those fine little love stories that can make you smile in your sleep at night.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
121. “Graffiti is beautiful; like a brick in the face of a cop.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
122. “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
123. “Of Richard M. Nixon: 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
124. “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
125. “Insanity is a legal term. Crazy is an art form.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
126. “Sex, drugs, and insanity have always worked for me, but I wouldn’t recommend them for everyone.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
127. “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
128. “Fear is just another word for ignorance.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
129. “Avoid being seized by the police. The cops are not your friends. Don’t tell them anything.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
130. “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
131. “Duke is an ugly word in Kentucky. Nothing in the world compares to the joy of beating those hateful swine from Duke.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
132. “There is no fool like a careless gambler who starts taking victory for granted.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
133. “Even a blind pig finds an acorn now and then.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
134. “An outlaw can be defined as somebody who lives outside the law, beyond the law, and not necessarily against it.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
135. “When you push a car off a cliff and blow it up, be sure to roll the windows down to avoid shrapnel. Also, strip the license plate so you’re not billed for the cleanup.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
136. “There is something fresh and crisp about the first hours of a Caribbean day, a happy anticipation that something is about to happen, maybe just up the street or around the next corner.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
137. “Few people understand the psychology of dealing with a highway traffic cop.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
138. “What kind of rat bastard psychotic would play that song- right now, at this moment?”
— Hunter S. Thompson
139. “A word to the wise is infuriating.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
140. “Once I establish credit, I may be able to function. A man needs credit. Especially when he has no money.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
141. “Things are no longer what they seem to be. My telephones are haunted, and animals whisper at me from unseen places.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
142. “Today’s pig is tomorrow’s bacon!”
— Hunter S. Thompson
143. “Old elephants limp off to the hills to die; old Americans go out to the highway and drive themselves to death with huge cars.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
144. “Don’t judge your taco by its price.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
145. “But I am in the gambling business, for good or ill; it is the business I have chosen, and the only governing rule that we all recognize is: always sit close to an exit and never trust a man who doesn’t sweat.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
146. “I’m a relatively respectable citizen. Multiple felon perhaps, but certainly not dangerous.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
147. “Never mind the track. The track is for punks. We are Road People. We are Cafe Racers.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
148. “I miss Nixon. Compared to these Nazis we have in the White House now, Richard Nixon was a flaming liberal.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
149. “With a bit of luck, his life was ruined forever. Always thinking that just behind some narrow door in all of his favorite bars, men in red woolen shirts are getting incredible kicks from things he’ll never know.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
150. “There is nothing more helpless and irresponsible than a man in the depths of an ether binge.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
151. “The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
152. “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
153. “You better take care of me, Lord, if you don’t you’re gonna have me on your hands.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
154. “In the meantime, I would drink, rest, and ponder the meaning of this mob.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
155. “Bush is a natural-born loser with a filthy-rich daddy who pimped his son out to rich oil-mongers. He hates music, football and sex, in no particular order, and he is no fun at all.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
156. “I’m bound to go to heaven because I’ve already served my time in hell.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
157. “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
158. “I need beaches, and blackness, and moonlit nakedness.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
159. “There might be some serious fun in politics.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
160. “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
161. “Las Vegas is the savage heart of the American Dream.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
162. “I sat there a long time and thought about a lot of things. Foremost among them was the suspicion that my strange and ungovernable instincts might do me in before I had a chance to get rich. 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 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
163. “Fiction is a bridge to the truth that journalism can’t reach.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
164. “They don’t hardly make ’em like him anymore – but just to be on the safe side, he should be castrated anyway.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
165. “At the same time, I shared a dark suspicion that the life we were leading was a lost cause, that we were all actors, kidding ourselves along on a senseless odyssey. It was the tension between these two poles – a restless idealism on one hand and a sense of impending doom on the other – that kept me going.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
166. “My blood is too thick for California: I have never been able to properly explain myself in this climate.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
167. “The Circus-Circus is what the whole help world would be doing on Saturday night if the Nazis had won the war. This is the Sixth Reich.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
168. “I am more than just a serious basketball fan. I am a lifelong 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
169. “He could shake your hand and stab you in the back at the same time.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
170. “I felt like a monster reincarnation of Horatio Alger: A man on the move, and just sick enough to be totally confident.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
171. “If there is in fact, a heaven and a hell, all we know for sure is that hell will be a viciously overcrowded version of Phoenix.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
172. “In a nation of frightened dullards, there is a sorry shortage of outlaws, and those few who make the grade are always welcome:.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
173. “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
174. “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
175. “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
176. “The reason most people play golf is to wear clothes they would not be caught dead in otherwise.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
177. “The Sixties were an era of extreme reality. I miss the smell of tear gas. I miss the fear of getting beaten.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
178. “There are times, however, and this is one of them when even being right feels wrong. What do you say, for instance, about a generation that has been taught that rain is poison and sex is death?”
— Hunter S. Thompson
179. “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
180. “Some people will tell you that slow is good – but I’m here to tell you that fast is better.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
181. “And the whole Bush family, from Texas, should be boiled in poisoned oil.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
182. “I never knew where I was going, but I ripped the tits off of everything that got in my way. By the time they figured me out, it was too late.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
183. “Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
184. “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
185. “I’m a word freak. I like words. I’ve always compared writing to music. That’s the way I feel about good paragraphs. When it really works, it’s like music.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
186. “The Raiders of old were vicious and crazy and cruel. Hanging around their locker room was like hanging around the weight room at Folsom Prison.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
187. “Reality itself is too twisted.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
188. “Writing is the flip side of sex – it’s good only when it’s over.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
189. “They look like caricatures of used-car dealers from Dallas. But they’re real. And, sweet Jesus, there are a hell of a lot of them – still.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
190. “I can’t think in terms of journalism without thinking in terms of political ends. Unless there’s been a reaction, there’s been no journalism. It’s cause and effect.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
191. “This 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 too seriously. After West Point and the Priesthood, LSD must have seemed entirely logical to him… but there is not much satisfaction in knowing that he blew it very badly for himself, because he took too many others down with him.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
192. “Never fire a warning shot. It is a waste of ammunition.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
193. “These are bad times for people who like to sit outside the library at dawn on a rainy morning and get ripped to the tits on crank and powerful music.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
194. “I haven’t found a drug yet that can get you anywhere near as high as sitting at a desk writing.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
195. “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
196. “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
197. “I didn’t know Johnny Depp could act until he played me.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
198. “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
199. “Fear? I know not fear. There are only moments of confusion.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
200. “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
