Hunter S. Thompson quotes

Born
July 18, 1937 Louisville, Kentucky, U.S.

Died
February 20, 2005.

Occupation
Journalist, author.

Hunter Stockton Thompson was an American journalist and author, and the founder of the gonzo journalism movement.

Truth is weirder than any fiction I’ve seen.
– Hunter S. Thompson

If Sunday is the Lord’s day, then Saturday belongs to the Devil. It is the only night of the week when he gives out Free passes to the Late show at the Too Much Fun Club.
– Hunter S. Thompson

Some may never live, but the crazy never die.
– Hunter S. Thompson

Freedom is something that dies unless it’s used.
– Hunter S. Thompson

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.
– Hunter S. Thompson

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.
– Hunter S. Thompson

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

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

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.
– Hunter S. Thompson

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

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

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.
– Hunter S. Thompson

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

Buy the ticket, take the ride.
– Hunter S. Thompson

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.
– Hunter S. Thompson

A word to the wise is infuriating.
– Hunter S. Thompson

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.
– Hunter S. Thompson

Of all the men that have run for president in the twentieth century, only George McGovern truly understood what a monument America could be to the human race.
– Hunter S. Thompson

‘Crazy’ is a term of art; ‘Insane’ is a term of law. Remember that, and you will save yourself a lot of trouble.
– Hunter S. Thompson

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.
– Hunter S. Thompson

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.
– Hunter S. Thompson

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

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

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.
– Hunter S. Thompson

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.
– Hunter S. Thompson

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.
– Hunter S. Thompson

I have never believed much in luck, and my sense of humor has tended to walk on the dark side.
– Hunter S. Thompson

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.
– Hunter S. Thompson

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

Victory is a fleeting thing in the gambling business. Today’s winners are tomorrow’s blinking toads, dumb beasts with no hope.
– Hunter S. Thompson

I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me.
– Hunter S. Thompson

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.
– Hunter S. Thompson

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

Fiction is based on reality unless you’re a fairytale artist.
– Hunter S. Thompson

America… just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.
– Hunter S. Thompson

Duke is an ugly word in Kentucky. Nothing in the world compares to the joy of beating those hateful swine from Duke.
– Hunter S. Thompson

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.
– Hunter S. Thompson

Without gambling, I would not exist.
– Hunter S. Thompson

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.
– Hunter S. Thompson

Yesterday’s weirdness is tomorrow’s reason why.
– Hunter S. Thompson

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.
– Hunter S. Thompson

For every moment of triumph, for every instance of beauty, many souls must be trampled.
– Hunter S. Thompson

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.
– Hunter S. Thompson

Paranoia is just another word for ignorance.
– Hunter S. Thompson

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

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.
– Hunter S. Thompson

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.
– Hunter S. Thompson

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.
– Hunter S. Thompson

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.
– Hunter S. Thompson

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.
– Hunter S. Thompson

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.
– Hunter S. Thompson

There might be some serious fun in politics.
– Hunter S. Thompson

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

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.
– Hunter S. Thompson

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.
– Hunter S. Thompson

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.
– Hunter S. Thompson

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

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