Hunter S. Thompson

Richard Nixon was a criminally insane Monster - Bill Clinton is a black-hearted Swine of a friend.

Democracy as a system has evolved into something that Thomas Jefferson didn't anticipate.

I just usually go with my own taste. If I like something, and it happens to be against the law, well, then I might have a problem.

Faster Faster until the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of death.

I am surprised and embarrassed to be a part of the first American generation to leave the country in far worse shape than it was when we first came into it.

I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs or insanity for everyone, but they've always worked for me.

Call on God, but row away from the rocks.

Paranoia is just another word for ignorance.

I have always loved blizzards, if only because of the driving experience - which is definitely an acquired taste.

There is no such thing as paranoia. Your worst fears can come true at any moment.

The mind of America is seized by a fatal dry rot - and it's only a question of time before all that the mind controls will run amuck in a frenzy of stupid, impotent fear.

Some may never live but the crazy never die

The trouble with Nixon is that he's a serious politics junkie. He's totally hooked and like any other junkie, he's a bummer to have around, especially as President.

I am more than just a serious basketball fan. I am a life-long addict. I was addicted from birth, in fact, because I was born in Kentucky and I learned, early on, that Habitual Domination was a natural way of life.

There is no fool like a careless gambler who starts taking victory for granted.

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

Nixon was a bad loser. He hated losing worse than death, and that is why I enjoyed him. We were both football fans, both addicts; and on some days, nothing else mattered.

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

Don't judge your taco by its price.

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.

'Crazy' is a term of art; 'Insane' is a term of law. Remember that, and you will save yourself a lot of trouble.

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.

I am not a yachting person, by nature, but I have just enough experience on the sea under sail to feel a certain nostalgia for it when I see a big white racing yacht heeled over at cruising speed on the ocean, and I can still tie a mean bowline knot on just about anything in less than 10 seconds.

Fiction is based on reality unless youre a fairy tale artist you have to get your knowledge of life from somewhere. You have to know the material youre writing about before you alter it.

Victory is a fleeting thing in the gambling business. Todays winners are tomorrows blinking toads dumb beasts with no hope.

There is nothing more helpless and irresponsible than a man in the depths of an ether binge.

Yes sir, I am a tortured man for all seasons, as they say, and I have powerful friends in high places. Birds sing where I walk, and children smile when they see me coming.

Rush Limbaugh is a lame professional swine, and he makes a good living at it. He is like a hired geek in some traveling backwoods carnival - the freaks who bite the heads off chickens - but Limbaugh is a modernized geek who thinks he can bite the heads off of people.

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

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.

I feel the same way about disco as I do about herpes.

Marathon running, like golf, is a game for players, not winners. That is why Callaway sells golf clubs and Nike sells running shoes. But running is unique in that the world's best racers are on the same course, at the same time, as amateurs, who have as much chance of winning as your average weekend warrior would scoring a touchdown in the NFL.

I have always hated bowling, and I don't mind admitting it.

All the blood is drained out of democracy - it dies - when only half the population votes.

A nervous blonde nymphet who thought that politics was some kind of game played by old people like bridge.

Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning.

I have learned, in my life and work as a sportswriter, that big-time Sports and big-time Politics are not so far apart in America. They are both a means to the same end, which is victory... And why not? Victory is good for you, and don't let anybody tell you different.

Rude people will now & then ask me why I think I know so much about Politics. I tell them it's because I'm Smart... But that is a lie: The real reason is because I'm an incurable Gambling addict.

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.

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.

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

In my heart, I am always a Raider.

I hate pain, despite my ability to tolerate it beyond all known parameters, which is not necessarily a good thing.

One thing I have learned in my painful career as a gambler is that bragging when you get lucky and win a few games will plunge you into gloom and unacceptable beatings very soon. It happens every time.

I think I'm one of the most patriotic people that I've ever encountered in America. I consider myself a bedrock patriot. I participate very actively in local politics, because my voice might be worthwhile. I participate in a meaningful way - not by donations; I work at it.

I have long understood that losing always comes with the territory when you wander into the gambling business, just as getting crippled for life is an acceptable risk in the linebacker business. They both are extremely violent sports, and pain is part of the bargain. Buy the ticket, take the ride.

We cannot expect people to have respect for law and order until we teach respect to those we have entrusted to enforce those laws.

It was a maddening image and the only way to whip it was to hang on until dusk and banish the ghosts with rum.

Not everybody is comfortable with the idea that politics is a guilty addiction. But it is.

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.

Quacks are a part of our culture, and we all fall prey to them. Who among us can say, for sure, that even our own personal physicians are honest and competent?

Without gambling, I would not exist.

You better take care of me Lord, if you don't you're gonna have me on your hands.

Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream

The next MVP of the Super Bowl is just as likely to have been a full-time grocery store bagger last year as a Heisman Trophy winner.

Buy the ticket, take the ride.

I was 22 when JFK was murdered, and I will never recover from it... Never.

March is a month without mercy for rabid basketball fans. There is no such thing as a 'gentleman gambler' when the Big Dance rolls around. All sheep will be fleeced, all fools will be punished severely... There are no Rules when the deal goes down in the final weeks of March. Even your good friends will turn into monsters.

There might be some serious fun in politics.

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.

Some may never live, but the crazy never die.

I believe the Republicans have never thought that democracy was anything but a tribal myth.

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.

The waitress had the appearance of a very old hooker who had finally found her place in life.

Yesterday's weirdness is tomorrow's reason why.

We must ride this strange torpedo out until the end.

That was always the difference between Muhammad Ali and the rest of us. He came, he saw, and if he didn't entirely conquer - he came as close as anybody we are likely to see in the lifetime of this doomed generation.

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.

Good people drink good beer.

All gamblers lose regularly, but they rarely discuss it in public. Losing is bad for the image, dude. Nobody buys Hot Tips from Losers. Remember that.

Liberalism itself has failed, and for a pretty good reason. It has been too often compromised by the people who represented it.

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

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.

One of the most basic factors in sports is that winning becomes a habit, and losing is the same way. When failure starts to feel normal in your life or your work or even your darkest vices, you won't have to go looking for trouble, because trouble will find you. Count on it.

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.

Justice is expensive in America. There are no Free Passes... You might want to remember this, the next time you get careless and blow off a few Parking Tickets. They will come back to haunt you the next time you see a Cop car in your rear-view mirror.

You can turn your back on a person, but never turn your back on a drug, especially when its waving a razor sharp hunting knife in your eye.

The writer must be a participant in the scene... like a film director who writes his own scripts, does his own camera work, and somehow manages to film himself in action, as the protagonist or at least the main character.

You can turn back on a person but you can never turn your back on a drug especially when its waving a razor sharp hunting knife in your eye.

I had a soft-spot in my heart for Ronald Reagan, if only because he was a sportswriter in his youth.

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.

The Hell's Angels try not to do anything halfway, and anyone who deals in extremes is bound to cause trouble, whether he means to or not. This, along with a belief in total retaliation for any offense or insult, is what makes the Hell's Angels unmanageable for the police and morbidly fascinating to the general public.

Sex without love is as hollow and ridiculous as love without sex.

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 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.

Truth is weirder than any fiction I've seen.

By any accepted standard, I have had more than nine lives. I counted them up once, and there were 13 times I almost and maybe should have died.

No man is so foolish but he may sometimes give another good counsel, and no man so wise that he may not easily err if he takes no other counsel than his own. He that is taught only by himself has a fool for a master.

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

I wasn't trying to be an outlaw writer. I never heard of that term; somebody else made it up. But we were all outside the law: Kerouac, Miller, Burroughs, Ginsberg, Kesey; I didn't have a gauge as to who was the worst outlaw. I just recognized allies: my people.

Too weird to live, too rare to die!

I am a professional sportswriter, among other things, and I take the games seriously. It is only one of my many powerful addictions, and I don't mind admitting any of them.

Victory is a fleeting thing in the gambling business. Today's winners are tomorrow's blinking toads, dumb beasts with no hope.

I've already become a mastodon in print - I don't see a consciousness for my kind of journalism.

When the going gets weird the weird turn pro.

I guess that's one of the things about growing up in the fifties - it never occurred to me that you wouldn't be at least as successful as your parents.

Gambling can turn into a dangerous two-way street when you least expect it. Weird things happen suddenly, and your life can go all to pieces.

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.

Gambling can turn into a dangerous two way street when you least expect it. Weird things happen suddenly and your life can go all to pieces.

Politics is the art of controlling your environment.