Top 75 Hunter S. Thompson Quotes

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.

The best thing about the Kentucky Derby is that it is only two minutes long. It is the quickest event in sports, except for Sumo-wrestling & Mike Tyson fights. Maybe Drag-racing is quicker, but I have never been attracted to it.

If I’d written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people – including me – would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.

February is always a bad month for TV sports. Football is gone, basketball is plodding along in the annual midseason doldrums, and baseball is not even mentioned.

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 only thing wrong with the NBA – or any other professional sport, for that matter – is a wild epidemic of Dumbness and overweening Greed. There is no Mystery about it, and no need to change any rules.

Politics is the art of controlling your environment.

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

I learned a long time ago that reality was much weirder than anyone’s imagination.

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.

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

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.

I am an Addictive Personality, they say, a natural slave to passion – and many Doctors have warned me against it. I am a High-risk Patient.

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

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.

I have warned many times about the guaranteed dangers of betting with your heart instead of your head – big darkness, soon come – but every once in a while you get a fair chance to have it both ways, and the annual NCAA basketball Tournament is one of them.

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 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.

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

The person who doesn’t scatter the morning dew will not comb gray hairs.

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.

Paranoia is just another word for ignorance.

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.

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.

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

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.

Nixon was a crook, of course, but he was also a rabid football fan – and he knew the game, which still astounds me, but I have always had a soft spot for him because of it.

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?

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 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.

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

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.

As long as I’m learning something, I figure I’m OK – it’s a decent day.

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.

Going to trial with a lawyer who considers your whole life-style a Crime in Progress is not a happy prospect.

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

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.

Freedom is something that dies unless it’s used.

The world is still a weird place, despite my efforts to make clear and perfect sense of it.

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.

For every moment of triumph, for every instance of beauty, many souls must be trampled.

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.

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

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.

Buy the ticket, take the ride.

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.

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.

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

In my heart, I am always a Raider.

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.

Truth is weirder than any fiction I’ve seen.

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

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

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

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.

Fiction is based on reality unless you’re a fairytale artist.

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.

Objective journalism is one of the main reasons that American politics has been allowed to be so corrupt for so long.

The best thing about the Kentucky Derby is that it is only two minutes long. It is the quickest event in sports, except for Sumo-wrestling & Mike Tyson fights. Maybe Drag-racing is quicker, but I have never been attracted to it.

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

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.