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Hunter S. Thompson

151 quotes

“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 (1937–2005) first seen 1951 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Security" (1951); excerpted in Outlaw Journalist: The Life & Times of Hunter S. Thompson (2008), page 15
“If any part of it doesn’t seem to make sense, by all means call it to my attention. I’m not trying to send you out “on the road” in search of Valhalla, but merely pointing out that it is not necessary to accept the choices handed down to you by life as you know it. There is more to it than that— 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 (1937–2005) first seen 1958 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Hume Logan" (22 April 1958) as excerpted in Letters of Note by Shaun Usher
“The hippies, who had never really believed they were the wave of the future anyway, saw the election results as brutal confirmation of the futility of fighting the establishment on its own terms. There had to be a whole new scene, they said, and the only way to do it was to make the big move — either figuratively or literally — from Berkeley to the Haight-Ashbury, from pragmatism to mysticism, from politics to dope... The thrust is no longer for "change" or "progress" or "revolution," but merely to escape, to live on the far perimeter of a world that might have been.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) first seen 1967 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Hashbury is the Capital of the Hippies" (May 1967); republished in Gonzo Papers, Vol. 1: The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time (1979), pp 392-394
“Richard Nixon has never been one of my favorite people anyway. For years I've regarded his 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. The Nixon I remembered was absolutely humorless; I couldn't imagine him laughing at anything except maybe a paraplegic who wanted to vote Democratic but couldn't quite reach the lever on the voting machine.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) first seen 1968 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Pageant (July 1968)
“The hard core, the outlaw elite, were the Hell's Angels... wearing the winged death's-head on the back of their sleeveless jackets and packing their "mamas" behind them on big "chopped hogs." They rode with a fine unwashed arrogance, secure in their reputation as the rottenest motorcycle gang in the whole history of Christendom.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Satan's Slaves, number three in the outlaw hierarchy, custom-bike specialists with a taste for the flesh of young dogs, flashy headbands and tender young blondes with lobotomy eyes.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Tiny hurts people. When he loses his temper he goes completely out of control and his huge body becomes a lethal weapon. It is difficult to see what role he might play in the Great Society.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The streets of every city in America are filled with men who would pay all the money they could lay their hands on to be transformed, even for a day, into hairy, hard-fisted brutes who walk all over cops, extort drinks from terrified bartenders and roar out of town on big motorcycles after raping the banker's daughter.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1937–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Any lawyer who says there's no such thing as rape should be hauled out to a public place by three large perverts and buggered at high noon, with all of his clients watching.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My face looked like it had been jammed into the spokes of a speeding Harley, and the only thing keeping me awake was the spastic pain of a broken rib. 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 (1937–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He had done a few good sketches but so far we hadn’t seen that special kind of face that I felt we would need for the lead drawing. It was a face I’d seen a thousand times at every Derby I’d ever been to. I saw it, in my head, as the mask of the whiskey gentry — a pretentious mix of booze, failed dreams and a terminal identity crisis; the inevitable result of too much inbreeding in a closed and ignorant culture.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Mayblossom Senility" (Steadman's phrase)...burnt out early or maybe just not much to burn in the first place. Not much energy in the faces, not much curiosity. Suffering in silence, nowhere to go after thirty in this life, just hang on and humor the children. Let the young enjoy themselves while they can. Why not?”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My eyes had finally opened enough for me to focus on the mirror across the room and I was stunned at the shock of recognition. For a confused instant I thought that Ralph had brought somebody with him — a model for that one special face we’d been looking for. There he was, by God — a puffy, drink-ravaged, disease-ridden caricature … like an awful cartoon version of an old snapshot in some once-proud mother’s family photo album. It was the face we’d been looking for — and it was, of course, my own. Horrible, horrible …”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1937–2005) first seen 1973 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Rolling Stone (2 August 1973)
“[On Pat Buchanan] We disagree so violently on almost everything that it's a real pleasure to drink with him. If nothing else, he's absolutely honest in his lunacy — and I've found, during my admittedly limited experience in political reporting, that power & honesty very rarely coincide.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) first seen 1973 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In a letter to Garry Wills (17 October 1973); published in Fear and Loathing in America (2000)
“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 (1937–2005) first seen 1973 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Ask Not for Whom the Bell Tolls… (October 1973), also published in Gonzo Papers, Vol I : The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time (1979)
“Jesus! How much more of this cheap-jack bullshit can we be expected to take from that stupid little gunsel? Who gives a fuck if he's lonely and depressed down there in San Clemente? If there were any such thing as true justice in this world, his rancid carcass would be somewhere down around Easter Island right now, in the belly of a hammerhead shark.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) first seen 1974 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Reacting to a Washington Post article on Nixon's life after resignation. Rolling Stone #171 (10 October 1974)
“When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) first seen 1974 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Fear and Loathing at the Super Bowl" (Rolling Stone #155, (28 February 1974); republished in Gonzo Papers, Vol. 1: The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time (1979), p. 49
“To Richard Milhous Nixon, who never let me down.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) first seen 1979 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: epigraph to Gonzo Papers, Vol I : The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time (1979), p. 7
“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 (1937–2005) first seen 1979 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Gonzo Papers, Vol. 1: The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time (1979)
“I returned to the Holiday Inn — where they have a swimming pool and air-conditioned rooms — to consider the paradox of a nation that has given so much to those who preach the glories of rugged individualism from the security of countless corporate sinecures, and so little to that diminishing band of yesterday's refugees who still practice it, day by day, in a tough, rootless and sometimes witless style that most of us have long since been weaned away from.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) first seen 1979 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Gonzo Papers, Vol. 1: The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time (1979)
“We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like "I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive..." And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming: "Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No point mentioning those bats, I thought. The poor bastard will see them soon enough.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Agnew was right. 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 (1937–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There was something... total... something very undermining about the McGovern defeat... There was a very unexplained kind of... ominous quality to it... weeping chaos. People you'd never expect to break down... stumbled off the plane in tears... It was such a shock to me that although I'd gone back to Washington to analyze... I saw how ripped up people were... I decided to hell with this... So I just went right around to the main terminal and got on another plane and went back to Colorado.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The kids are turned off from politics, they say. Most of 'em don't even want to hear about it. All they want to do these days is lie around on waterbeds and smoke that goddamn marrywanna... yeah, and just between you and me Fred thats probably all for the best.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Even that far-left radical bastard George S. McGovern — babbling a maddening litany of his most Far Out ideas — would be hard pressed to crank up a more than 30% animosity quotient.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The importance of Liking Yourself is a notion that fell heavily out of favour 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 (1937–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A nervous blonde nymphet who thought that politics was some kind of game played by old people, like bridge.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1937–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is nothing so unusual, they tell me, about coming back to your car and finding the radio aerial torn off, the windshield wipers bent up in the air like spaghetti, and all the windows smashed... for no particular reason except to make sure you know just exactly where it's at these days. Where indeed?”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1937–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The ugly fallout from the American Dream has been coming down on us at a pretty consistent rate since Sitting Bull's time — and the only real difference now, with Election Day '72 only a few weeks away, is that we seem to be on the verge of ratifying the fallout and forgetting the Dream itself.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Ed: Rip up the streets? HST: With jackhammers. Ed: With jackhammers?”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Jesus man! You don't look for acid! Acid finds you when it thinks you're ready.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There was a time, about ten years ago, when I could write like Grantland Rice. Not necessarily because I believed all that sporty bullshit, but because sportswriting was the only thing I could do that anybody was willing to pay for. And none of the people I wrote about seemed to give a hoot in hell what kind of lunatic gibberish I wrote about them, just as long as it moved. They wanted Action, Color, Speed, Violence...”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How many times had he stood calmly back there on the duckboards and listened to respectable-looking people talk about raping the hotel penguins?”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) first seen 1983 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Curse of Lono (1983)
“I went to the Democratic Convention as a journalist, and returned a raving beast. For me, that week in Chicago was far worse than the worst bad acid trip I'd even heard rumors about. It permanently altered my brain chemistry…”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) first seen 1968 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Comment on the protest activity at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, as quoted in "The Doctor Is In" by Curtis Wilkie, in The Boston Globe Magazine (7 February 1988), p. 16
“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 (1937–2005) first seen 1985 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Originally published in the San Francisco Examiner (4 November 1985), this is often quoted as concluding with the statement "There's also a negative side." Research by David Emery, in Your Guide to Urban Legends indicat…
“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 (1937–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was Saturday night in America, and I felt like a native son.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The concept of Ronald Reagan as a master Mole for the Aryan Nation has not taken hold yet, in the centers of political power. Even his closest people still see him as a profoundly talented old man from Hollywood who will go down in history as perhaps the greatest salesman of his time.... But not as a philosopher-king or a serious political think, like all of those other presidents that he frequently quotes. They view him more or less as they would view Willie Loman if he had wandered through the looking glass and became president of the United States.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) first seen 1986 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The South African Problem", (1986)
“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 (1937–2005) first seen 1992 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Fear and Loathing in Elko" Rolling Stone (23 January 1992)
“There is a huge body of evidence to support the notion that me and the police were put on this earth to do extremely different things and never to mingle professionally with each other, except at official functions, when we all wear ties and drink heavily and whoop it up like the natural, good-humored wild boys that we know in our hearts that we are. … These occasions are rare, but they happen — despite the forked tongue of fate that has put us forever on different paths...”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) first seen 1992 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Fear and Loathing in Elko" Rolling Stone (23 January 1992)
“Not everybody is comfortable with the idea that politics is a guilty addiction. But it is. They are addicts, and they are guilty and they do lie and cheat and steal — like all junkies. And when they get in a frenzy, they will sacrifice anything and anybody to feed their cruel and stupid habit, and there is no cure for it. That is addictive thinking. That is politics — especially in presidential campaigns. That is when the addicts seize the high ground. They care about nothing else. They are salmon, and they must spawn. They are addicts.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) first seen 1994 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Better than Sex (22 August 1994)
“No candidate will risk being linked with a "suspected" addict — but a registered, admitted addict is a whole different thing. As long as I'd confessed, I was okay. Nobody really cared about the countless criminal addictions that preyed on me day and night — just as long as I was not in denial. That was the key. As long as they knew that I knew I was sick and guilty, I was safe.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) first seen 1994 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Better than Sex (22 August 1994)
“If you consider the great journalists in history, you don't see too many objective journalists on that list. H. L. Mencken was not objective. Mike Royko, who just died. I. F. Stone was not objective. Mark Twain was not objective. I don't quite understand this worship of objectivity in journalism. Now, just flat-out lying is different from being subjective.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) first seen 1997 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview in The Atlantic Monthly (17 September 1997)
“Objective journalism is one of the main reasons American politics has been allowed to be so corrupt for so long. You can't be objective about Nixon.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“These are harsh words for a man only recently canonized by President Clinton and my old friend George McGovern — but I have written worse things about Nixon, many times, and the record will show that I kicked him repeatedly long before he went down. 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 (1937–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source