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Hunter S. Thompson Quotes
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Hunter Stockton Thompson was an American journalist and author, and the founder of the gonzo journalism movement. Born in Louisville, Kentucky, to a middle-class family, Thompson had a turbulent youth after the death of his father left the family in poverty. He was unable to formally finish high school as he was incarcerated for 60 days after abetting a robbery. He subsequently joined the United States Air Force before moving into journalism. He traveled frequently, including stints in California, Puerto Rico, and Brazil, before settling in Aspen, Colorado, in the early 1960s.

Thompson became internationally known with the publication of Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs . For his research on the book he had spent a year living and riding with the Angels, experiencing their lives and hearing their stories first-hand. Previously a relatively conventional journalist, with the publication in 1970 of The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved he became a counter cultural figure, with his own brand of New Journalism which he termed "Gonzo", an experimental style of journalism where reporters involve themselves in the action to such a degree that they become central figures of their stories. The work he remains best known for, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream , constitutes a rumination on the failure of the 1960s counterculture movement. It was first serialized in Rolling Stone, a magazine with which Thompson would be long associated, and was released as a film starring Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro and directed by Terry Gilliam in 1998.

Politically minded, Thompson ran unsuccessfully for sheriff of Pitkin County, Colorado, in 1970, on the Freak Power ticket. He became well known for his inveterate hatred of Richard Nixon, who he claimed represented "that dark, venal, and incurably violent side of the American character" and whom he characterized in Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72. Thompson's output notably declined from the mid-1970s, as he struggled with the consequences of fame, and he complained that he could no longer merely report on events as he was too easily recognized. He was also known for his lifelong use of alcohol and illegal drugs, his love of firearms, and his iconoclastic contempt for authoritarianism. He remarked: "I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me."

After a bout of health problems, Thompson committed suicide at the age of 67. In accordance with his wishes, his ashes were fired out of a cannon in a ceremony funded by his friend Johnny Depp and attended by friends including then-Senator John Kerry and Jack Nicholson. Hari Kunzru wrote that "the true voice of Thompson is revealed to be that of American moralist ... one who often makes himself ugly to expose the ugliness he sees around him."

✵ 18. July 1937 – 20. February 2005   •   Other names Хантер Стоктон Томпсон, هانتر اس. تامپسون
Hunter S. Thompson photo
Hunter S. Thompson: 268   quotes 89   likes

Hunter S. Thompson Quotes

“To Richard Milhous Nixon, who never let me down.”

Hunter S. Thompson book The Great Shark Hunt

epigraph to Gonzo Papers, Vol I : The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time (1979), p. 7
1970s

“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

Salon interview (3 February 2003) http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/02/03/thompson/index_np.html
2000s

Life , Law , Change , Time

“You'd be surprised at the things people will do in order to get their names or pictures in the paper.”

Hunter S. Thompson

Letter to Judy Stellings (18 November 1956), p. 30
1990s, The Proud Highway : The Fear and Loathing Letters Volume I (1997)

People

“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

"The Bush League" (9 September 2003)
2000s

Time , Country

“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

1990s, He Was A Crook (1994)

People , Angels , Way , Swine

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

Hunter S. Thompson

1970s, Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72 (1973)

People , Game

“Anything that gets the adrenalin moving like a 440 volt blast in a copper bathtub is good for the reflexes and keeps the veins free of cholesterol… but too many adrenaline rushes in any given time span has the same effect on the nervous system as too many electro-shock treatments are said to have on the brain: after a while you start burning out the circuits. When a jackrabbit gets addicted to road-running, its only a matter of time before he gets smashed — and when a journalist turns into a politics junkie he will sooner or later start raving and babbling in print about things that only a person who has Been There can possibly understand.”

Hunter S. Thompson

1970s, Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72 (1973)

Understanding , Time , Personality

“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

1960s, Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs (1966)

People , Hurt

“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

1990s, The Rum Diary (1998)

God , Smile

“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?”

Hunter S. Thompson

milestone or trademark casinos are now gone.
"30 years after FALILV: Hunter S. Thompson on Las Vegas Today'" Las Vegas City Life (7 June 2002)
2000s

“Is it possible that he has already abandoned all hope of getting re-elected? Or does he plan to cancel the Election altogether by declaring a national military emergency with terrorists closing in from all sides, leaving him with no choice but to launch a huge bomb immediately?... Desperate men do desperate things, and stupid men do stupid things. We are in for a desperately stupid summer.”

Hunter S. Thompson

"Bush's Disturbing Sleeping Disorder" (18 February 2004)
2000s

Men , Stupidity , Hope , Summer

“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

"Am I Turning Into a Pervert?" (18 November 2003)
2000s

World , Past , Country

“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

1970s, Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72 (1973)

Cars , Idea

“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

Rolling Stone (2 August 1973)
1970s

Learning

“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

"Letter to Hume Logan" April 22, 1958. Excerpted in 'Letters of Note' by Shaun Usher.
1950s

Life , Search , Sense , Parting

“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

Associated Press interview (2003) http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3404272/
2000s

Life , Knowledge , Reality

“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

1990s, The Rum Diary (1998)

Feeling

“The 2004 presidential election will be a matter of life or death for the whole nation. We are sick today, and we will be even sicker tomorrow if this wretched half-bright swine of a president gets re-elected in November.”

Hunter S. Thompson

"The Big Finale Was a Big Disappointment" (6 April 2004)
2000s

Life , Death , Swine

“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 book The Great Shark Hunt

Gonzo Papers, Vol. 1: The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time (1979)
1970s

Holiday

“John F. Kennedy … murdered in Dallas by some hapless geek named Oswald who worked for either Castro, the mob, Jimmy Hoffa, the CIA, his dominatrix landlady or the odious, degenerate FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover. The list is long and crazy — maybe Marilyn Monroe's first husband fired those shots from the grassy knoll. Who knows? A whole generation of American journalists is still embarrassed by their failure to answer that question. JFK's ghost will haunt the corridors of power in America for as long as the grass is green and the rivers run to the sea. Take my word for it, Bubba. I have heard his footsteps for 30 years and I still feel guilty about not being able to explain the biggest news story of my lifetime to my son.”

Hunter S. Thompson

Better than Sex (22 August 1994)
1990s

Feeling , Failure , Question , Grass

“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

1970s, Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72 (1973)

Cars

“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

1990s, The Rum Diary (1998)

“The only ones left with any confidence at all are the New Dumb. It is the beginning of the end of our world as we knew it. Doom is the operative ethic.”

Hunter S. Thompson

2000s, Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century (2004)

World , Confidence

“No point mentioning those bats, I thought. The poor bastard will see them soon enough.”

Hunter S. Thompson

1970s, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971)

“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.”

Hunter S. Thompson

2000s, Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century (2004)

Fear , Understanding

“"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 The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved

"The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved" in Scanlan's Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, (June 1970)
1970s

Life , Children , Silence , Suffering

“Not even the foulest atrocities of Adolf Hitler ever shocked me so badly as these Abu Ghraib photographs did.”

Hunter S. Thompson

"Let's Go to the Olympics!" (18 May 2004); this was afterwards edited at ESPN to read "These horrifying digital snapshots of the American dream in action on foreign soil are worse than anything even I could have expected." Drudge Report (24 May 2004) http://www.drudgereportarchives.com/data/2004/05/24/20040524_231202_flash3.htm
2000s

“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

ibid.
1990s

“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 book The Great Shark Hunt

"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)
1970s

Children , World , Fear , Learning

“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

1970s, Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72 (1973)

Idea

“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

1960s, Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs (1966)

Dogs

“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 book The Curse of Lono

The Curse of Lono (1983)
1980s

People , Time

“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

"Domestic terrorism at the Super Bowl" (11 February 2002)
2000s

War , Boy , Housing , Dead

“It was Saturday night in America, and I felt like a native son.”

Hunter S. Thompson

1980s, Generation of Swine (1988)

Night

“What we are looking at on all our TV sets is a man who finally, after 24 years of frenzied effort, became the President of the United States with a personal salary of $200,000 a year and an unlimited expense account including a fleet of private helicopters, jetliners, armored cars, personal mansions and estates on both coasts and control over a budget beyond the wildest dream of King Midas … and all the dumb bastard can show us, after five years of total freedom to do anything he wants with all this power, is a shattered national economy, disastrous defeat in a war we could have ended four years ago on far better terms than he finally came around to, and a hand-picked personal staff put together through five years of screening, whose collective criminal record will blow the minds of high-school American History students for the next 100 years.”

Hunter S. Thompson

Rolling Stone #144 (27 September 1973)
1970s

War , School , Dreams , Cars

“We are like pygmies lost in a maze of haze. We are not at war, we are having a nervous breakdown, again.”

Hunter S. Thompson

2000s, Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century (2004)

War

“Once I establish credit, I may be able to function. A man needs credit. Especially when he has no money.”

Hunter S. Thompson

Letter to Dwight Martin (21 February 1964), p. 440
1990s, The Proud Highway : The Fear and Loathing Letters Volume I (1997)

Money

“I had a soft spot in my heart for Ronald Reagan, if only because he was a sportswriter in his youth, and also because his wife gave the best head in Hollywood.”

Hunter S. Thompson book Hey Rube

Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness (2004)
2000s

Youth , Heart

“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

"Big Darkness" (22 July 2003)
2000s

Family , Fools , Failure , Future

“Platitudes are safe, because they're easy to wink at, but truth is something else again.”

Hunter S. Thompson

Letter to William J. Kennedy (29 October 1959), p. 192
1990s, The Proud Highway : The Fear and Loathing Letters Volume I (1997)

Truth

“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

1960s, Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs (1966)

Men , Money , Drink , Daughters

“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

A note to his grandson, Will (2005) http://books.google.com/books?id=9Zy4GJrn--UC&pg=PA350&dq=%22truth+seekers,+lovers+and+warriors%22&hl=en&ei=AyvoTYrBIIq8sQOBg7XtDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&sqi=2&ved=0CCoQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22truth%20seekers%2C%20lovers%20and%20warriors%22&f=false, reprinted in "Outlaw Journalist : The Life and Times of Hunter S. Thompson" (2008), by William McKeen
2000s

Forgetting , Learning , Music , Truth

“For myself, I would much prefer to be stuck with Kentucky in the NCAA Tournament, than stuck with George Bush in the White House. It is the difference between losing your wallet at a cock fight and losing all your credit cards forever, along with your job and your house and your ability to earn enough money to pay off your sports-gambling debts or even a six-pack on game day...”

Hunter S. Thompson

"What's Better Than the Tournament?' (18 March 2004)
2000s

Money , Sport , Housing , Game

“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

1990s, The Rum Diary (1998)

Way , Angels , Night , Parting

“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

1990s, He Was A Crook (1994)

Housing , History , Dreams , Heart

“All political power comes from the barrel of either guns, pussy, or opium pipes, and people seem to like it that way.”

Hunter S. Thompson book Kingdom of Fear

2000s, Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century (2004)

People , Way