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Hunter S. Thompson
151 quotes
“He could shake your hand and stab you in the back at the same time.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If the right people had been in charge of Nixon's funeral, his casket would have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective Journalism — which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place. He looked so good on paper that you could almost vote for him sight unseen. He seemed so all-American, so much like Horatio Alger, that he was able to slip through the cracks of Objective Journalism. You had to get Subjective to see Nixon clearly, and the shock of recognition was often painful.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nixon will be remembered as a classic case of a smart man shitting in his own nest. But he also shit in our nests, and that was the crime that history will burn on his memory like a brand. By disgracing and degrading the Presidency of the United States, by fleeing the White House like a diseased cur, Richard Nixon broke the heart of the American Dream.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Hopes rise and dreams flicker and die. Love plans for tomorrow and loneliness thinks of yesterday. Life is beautiful and living is pain. The sound of music floats down a dark street.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) first seen 1956 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Gerald "Ching" Tyrrell, (11 November 1956), p. 28
“You'd be surprised at the things people will do in order to get their names or pictures in the paper.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) first seen 1956 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Judy Stellings (18 November 1956), p. 30
“Ah, fortune and fame shall follow me...and I shall dwell in the world of the chosen for a few moments of fleeting ecstasy; ere the seven burly lads turn into creditors and hustle me off to debtors' prison at last.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) first seen 1957 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Porter Bibb III (6 February 1957), p. 44
“They say that "he who flies highest, falls farthest" — and who am I to argue? But we can't forget that "he who doesn't flap his wings, never flies at all". And with that, I'll stop trying to convince myself that I can't fail; how dull the whole thing would be if that were true.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) first seen 1957 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Larry Callen (30 October 1957), p. 71
“(Just heard Gen. White's proclamation that we "have Russia zeroed in from all directions." I am waiting now for Vannevar Bush and Ed Teller to announce that our new supersensitive radar picked up a rash of heart tremors from the direction of the USSR, immediately after White's remarkably insignificant statement, I could almost hear Karl Marx laughing in his tomb.)”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) first seen 1957 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Lieutenant Colonel Frank Campbell (29 November 1957), p. 76
“But fie on these unanswered queries and fie on those who pose them. There are stories to be written, drinks to be drunk, women to be ravished, and … alas, money to be made. We shall ride the bouncing ball and fight gamely to avoid being on the bottom when it bounces. … that is all ye know and all ye need to know. Amen.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) first seen 1958 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Lieutenant Colonel Frank Campbell (6 January 1958), p. 96
“Events of the past two years have virtually decreed that I shall wrestle with the literary muse for the rest of my days. And so, having tasted the poverty of one end of the scale, I have no choice but to direct my energies toward the acquisition of fame and fortune. Frankly, I have no taste for either poverty or honest labor, so writing is the only recourse left me.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) first seen 1958 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Arch Gerhart (29 January 1958), p. 106
“I may sound a little black, but I'm really pretty well adjusted.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) first seen 1958 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Kay Menyers (17 March 1958), p. 109
“A man has to BE something; he has to matter.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) first seen 1958 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Hume Logan (22 April 1958), p. 118
“A man who procrastinates in his choosing will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) first seen 1958 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Hume Logan (22 April 1958), p. 119
“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 (1937–2005) first seen 1958 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Larry Callen (14 July 1958), p. 133
“Sacrificing good men to journalism is like sending William Faulkner to work for Time magazine.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) first seen 1958 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Jerome H. Walker (7 December 1958), p. 142
“Platitudes are safe, because they're easy to wink at, but truth is something else again.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) first seen 1959 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to William J. Kennedy (29 October 1959), p. 192
“There is at this moment a beetle the size of god's ass on the table about six inches from the t-writer. It is worse than anything Kafka ever dreamed, so big I can see its eyes and the hair on its legs — jesus, suddenly it leaped off and now circles me with a menacing whir.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) first seen 1962 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Paul Semonin (26 May 1962), p. 337
“Once I establish credit, I may be able to function. A man needs credit. Especially when he has no money.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) first seen 1964 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Dwight Martin (21 February 1964), p. 440
“Something new is wanted. A new novel, perhaps. Something the ten-percenters don't have their hooks into yet. Those soul-fuckers should all be killed.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) first seen 1967 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to William J. Kennedy (12 July 1967), p. 630
“Most people who deal in words don't have much faith in them and I am no exception — especially the big ones like Happy and Love and Honest and Strong. They are too elusive and far too relative when you compare them to sharp, mean little words like Punk and Cheap and Phony. I feel at home with these, because they are scrawny and easy to pin, but the big ones are tough and it takes either a priest or a fool to use them with any confidence.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The scene I had just witnessed brought back a lot of memories — not of things I have done but of things I have failed to do, wasted hours and frustrated moments and opportunities forever lost because time had eaten so much of my life and I would never get it back.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I had come to regard him as a loner with no real past and a future so vague there was no sense talking about it.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Disgusting as he usually was, on rare occasions he showed flashes of stagnant intelligence. But his brain was so rotted with drink and dissolute living that whenever he put it to work it behaved like an old engine that had gone haywire from being dipped in lard.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1937–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“By the time we got to the street, I could see the first rays of the sun, a cool pink glow in the eastern sky. The fact that I’d spent all night in a cell and a courtroom made that morning one of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen. There was a peace and brightness about it, a chilly Caribbean dawn after a night in a filthy jail. I looked out at the ships and the sea beyond them, and I felt crazy to be free with a whole day ahead of me. Then I realized I would sleep most of the day, and my excitement disappeared.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I like this place” he said with a grin “I like to sit up here and look down at the beach and think of all the good things I could do with a Luger.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If I had a Luger, I thought, I could drill the bastards. I leaned on one elbow and pointed a finger at the window, seeing what kind of shot I would get. Perfect. There was just enough light in the street for a good silhouette. I knew it would happen quickly, I’d have no choice: just pull the trigger and go deaf from the terrible noise, a frenzy of screaming and scratching followed by a ghastly thump of a body knocked back and down to the sidewalk.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 a balcony overlooking the town and the harbor; then you sat there and drank until something happened. I felt a tremendous distance between me and everything real.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I sat there for 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 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 (1937–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but to those who see it coming and jump aside.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sometimes at dusk, when you were trying to relax and not think of the general stagnation, the Garbage God would gather a handful of those choked-off morning hopes and dangle them somewhere just out of reach; they would hang in the breeze and make a sound like delicate glass bells, reminding you of something you never quite got hold of, and never would.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The stewardess reached down to fasten Bloor's seatbelt. I saw his left arm snake out and settle affectionately around her shoulders. Good God! I thought. This is it. I could see the headlines in tomorrow's News. But the stewardess only smiled and backed off a few steps, dismissing Bloor's crude advance with a slap at his arm and an icy professional smile. I tried to return it, but my face was not working properly.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Jesus, I thought, I am ripped right straight to the tits. Where am I? Are we going up or down? Somewhere in the back of my brain, I knew I was sitting in a jeep in the parking lot of a night club on an island off the Mexican coast — but how could I really be sure, with another part of my brain apparently convinced that I was looking down on the huge glittering bowl of Los Angeles from the cockpit of a 727? Was that the Milky Way? Or Sunset Boulevard? Orion, or the Beverly Hills Hotel?”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1937–2005) first seen 2001 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Kingdom of Fear" (12 September 2001)
“It will be guerilla warfare on a global scale, with no front lines and no identifiable enemy … We are going to punish somebody for this attack, but just who or what will be blown to smithereens for it is hard to say. Maybe Afghanistan, maybe Pakistan or Iraq, or possibly all three at once. Who knows?”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) first seen 2001 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Kingdom of Fear" (12 September 2001)
“This is going to be a very expensive war, and Victory is not guaranteed — for anyone, and certainly not for anyone as baffled as George W. Bush. All he knows is that his father started the war a long time ago, and that he, the goofy child-President, has been chosen by Fate and the global Oil industry to finish it. Now.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) first seen 2001 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: When War Drums Roll" (17 September 2001)
“The last half of the 20th century will seem like a wild party for rich kids, compared to what's coming now. The party's over, folks. . . [Censorship of the news] is a given in wartime, along with massive campaigns of deliberately-planted "Dis-information". That is routine behavior in Wartime — for all countries and all combatants — and it makes life difficult for people who value real news.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) first seen 2001 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: When War Drums Roll" (17 September 2001)
“This blizzard of mind-warping war propaganda out of Washington is building up steam. Monday is Anthrax, Tuesday is Bankruptcy, Friday is Child-Rape, Thursday is Bomb-scares, etc., etc., etc... If we believed all the brutal, frat-boy threats coming out of the White House, we would be dead before Sunday. It is pure and savage terrorism reminiscent of Nazi Germany.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) first seen 2002 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Domestic terrorism at the Super Bowl" (11 February 2002)
“The city's frightening now. That's the basis of my reaction to Las Vegas. It's not the city I wrote about. It's not the same place at all. You'll notice that even the — what do you call them? — milestone or trademark casinos are now gone.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) first seen 2002 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 30 years after FALILV: Hunter S. Thompson on Las Vegas Today'" Las Vegas City Life (7 June 2002)
“It ain't much, but it's the only weapon we have against the Greedheads.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) first seen 2002 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On voting, in "My 49er Habit" (4 November 2002), also published in Hey Rube : Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness (2004)
“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 (1937–2005) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Associated Press interview (2003)
“But speaking of rules, you've been arrested dozens of times in your life. Specific incidents aside, what's common to these run-ins? Where do you stand vis-à-vis the law? "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 (1937–2005) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Salon interview (3 February 2003)
“We are turning into a nation of whimpering slaves to Fear — fear of war, fear of poverty, fear of random terrorism, fear of getting down-sized or fired because of the plunging economy, fear of getting evicted for bad debts, or suddenly getting locked up in a military detention camp on vague charges of being a Terrorist sympathizer.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Extreme Behavior in Aspen" (3 February 2003)
“It is hard to ignore the prima facie dumbness that got us bogged down in this nasty war in the first place. This is not going to be like Daddy's War, old sport. He actually won, and he still got run out of the White House nine months later.. . The whole thing sucks. It was wrong from the start, and it is getting wronger by the hour.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Love in a Time of War" (31 March 2003)
“What the hell is going on here? How could this once-proud nation have changed so much, so drastically, in only a little more than two years. In what seems like the blink of an eye, this George Bush has brought us from a prosperous nation at peace to a broke nation at war.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Sad Week in America" (10 March 2003)
“But wow! This goofy child president we have on our hands now. He is demonstrably a fool and a failure, and this is only the summer of '03. The American nation is in the worst condition I can remember in my lifetime, and our prospects for the immediate future are even worse. . . The Bush family must be very proud of themselves today, but I am not. Big Darkness, soon come. Take my word for it.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Big Darkness" (22 July 2003)
“The utter collapse of this Profoundly criminal Bush conspiracy will come none too soon for people like me... The massive plundering of the U.S. Treasury and all its resources has been almost on a scale that is criminally insane, and has literally destroyed the lives of millions of American people and American families. Exactly. You and me, sport — we are the ones who are going to suffer, and suffer massively. This is going to be just like the Book of Revelation said it was going to be — the end of the world as we knew it.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Nation's Capital" (29 July 2003)
“I had a truly horrible dream last night … [Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mike Tyson and I] were on our way to a TV studio for a debate about his long-time working friendship with the powerful Bush family from Texas and how it might affect the next Bush presidency when The Terminator seizes power in Sacramento and tries to hand over the state's 54 electoral votes by election day in 2004. That is the basic plan behind Schwarzenegger running. He doesn't want to be Governor, he just wants the electoral votes to go to Bush this time.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Nightmare in La-La-Land" (17 August 2003)
“Why are we seeing George Bush on TV every two hours for nine or ten days at a time, like some kind of mutated Mr. Rogers clone? Something is dangerously wrong in any country where a monumentally-failed backwoods politician can scare our national TV networks so totally that they will give him anything he wants.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Bush League" (9 September 2003)