Hunter S. Thompson Quotes

“I felt a strange tightness coming over me, and I reacted instinctively – for the first time in a long, long while – by slipping my notebook into my belt and reaching down to take off my watch. The first thing to go in a street fight is your watch, and once you’ve lost a few, you develop a certain instinct that lets you know when it’s time to get the thing off your wrist and into a safe pocket.”

“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.”

“Reality itself is too twisted.”

“I went to the Democratic Convention as a journalist, and returned a cold-blooded revolutionary.”

“A man can live on his wits and his balls for only so long.”

“Sex, drugs, and insanity have always worked for me, but I wouldn't recommend them for everyone.”

“The first impression is always the right one. I rarely change my mind upward about people.”

“It drops us into a vigorous current, a constant state of misguided control. The doomed generation takes a final step forward, ignoring all the signs that state the obvious, and leaps into a trip no drug known to man could ever encompass.”

“Familiarity seems to breed contempt”

“You can’t play city rules when you live in a jungle.”

“Though I was careful never to mention it, I began to see a new dimension in everything that happened.”

“It is like sitting in a traffic jam on the San Diego Freeway with your windows rolled up and Portuguese music booming out of the surround-sound speakers while animals gnaw on your neck and diseased bill collectors hammer on your doors with golf clubs.”

“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.”

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

“The first time I managed to pick up a basketball I knew I was destined to lead the UK to another National championship. ... Even now, so many years later, I still believe Kentucky will go undefeated in March & win everything.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“Don't have sex in the lobby - it's usually awkward.”

“Sometimes you're fooled quickly. You want to be fooled. If you can't trust your first impression you're going to have a harder time than you should.”

“There is no story unless you've written it.”

“I think you either have to have a very strong decisive person at the top or else a really brilliant staff command.”

“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. My father taught me that, along with a few other things that have kept my life interesting.”

“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.”

“My life has been the polar opposite of safe, but I am proud of it and so is my son, and that is good enough for me. I would do it all over again without changing the beat, although I have never recommended it to others. That would be cruel and irresponsible and wrong, I think, and I am none of those things.”