Hunter S. Thompson Quotes

“I'll call New York for some cash.”

“I have long admired Ron Whitehead. He is crazy as nine loons, and his poetry is a dazzling mix of folk wisdom and pure mathematics”

“We are living in dangerously weird times now. Smart people just shrug and admit they're dazed and confused. 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.”

“The person who doesn't scatter the morning dew will not comb gray hairs.”

“It was obvious that he was a man who marched through life to the rhythms of some drum I would never hear.”

“With a bit of luck, his life was ruined forever. Always thinking that just behind some narrow door in all of his favorite bars, men in red woolen shirts are getting incredible kicks from things he’ll never know.”

“A man has to BE something; he has to matter.”

“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.”

“To give advice to a man who asks what to do with his life implies something very close to egomania. To presume to point a man to the right and ultimate goal - to point with a trembling finger in the RIGHT direction is something only a fool would take upon himself.”

“I think I'm going to have to get a flying license very soon, and maybe one of those Lear jets. It beats motorcycles all to hell.”

“John F. Kennedy, who seized the White House from Richard Nixon in a frenzied campaign that turned a whole generation of young Americans into political junkies, got shot in the head for his efforts, 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?”

“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.”

“I was not proud of what I had learned but I never doubted that it was worth knowing.”

“A sense of humor is the main measure of sanity.”

“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.”

“Weird behavior is natural in smart children, just as curiosity is to a kitten.”

“I never knew where I was going, but I ripped the tits off of everything that got in my way. By the time they figured me out, it was too late.”

“People think I watch TV too much, but they are wrong. There is a huge difference between merely "watching" TV and learning to respond aggressively to it. The difference, for most people, is the difference between the living and dying of their own brains.”

“There is nothing Modern about doing dumb things for dumb reasons.”

“I'd almost prefer [Richard] Nixon. I'd say [Bill] Clinton is every bit as corrupt as Nixon, but a lot smoother.”

“There is no way to understand the public reaction to the sight of a Freak smashing a coconut with a hammer on the hood of a white Cadillac in a Safeway parking lot unless you actually do it, and I tell you it's tense.”

“Still humping the American Dream”

“You won't find reasonable men on the tops of tall mountains.”

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

“A little bit of this town goes a very long way.”