01UndatedFor every moment of triumph, for every instance of beauty, many souls must be trampled.Hunter S. Thompson / quote ↗
02UndatedAmerica...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 uncomfortableHunter S. Thompson / quote ↗
05UndatedWhat do you want? Where's the goddamn ice I ordered? Where's the booze? There's a war on, man! People are being killed!Hunter S. Thompson / quote ↗
06UndatedIn a nation run by swine, all pigs are upward-mobile and the rest of us are fucked until we can put our acts together: not necessarily to win, but mainly to keep from losing completely.Hunter S. Thompson / quote ↗
07UndatedThe waitress had the appearance of a very old hooker who had finally found her place in lifeHunter S. Thompson / quote ↗
08UndatedComing of age in a fascist police state will not be a barrel of fun for anybody, much less for people like me, who are not inclined to suffer Nazis gladly and feel only contempt for the cowardly flag-suckers who would gladly give up their outdated freedom to live for the mess of pottage they have been conned into believing will be freedom from fear.Ho ho ho. Let's not get carried away here. Freedom was yesterday in this country. Its value has been discounted. The only freedom we truly crave today is freedom from Dumbness. Nothing else matters.Hunter S. Thompson / quote ↗
09UndatedWriting is the flip side of sex - it's only good when it's over.Hunter S. Thompson / quote ↗
10UndatedSo much for Objective Journalism. Don't bother to look for it here--not under any byline of mine; or anyone else I can think of. 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 / quote ↗
12UndatedThe brutal reality of politics would be probably intolerable without drugs.Hunter S. Thompson / quote ↗
13UndatedLiberalism itself has failed, and for a pretty good reason. It has been too often compromised by the people who represented it.Hunter S. Thompson / quote ↗
14UndatedMcGovern made some stupid mistakes, but in context they seem almost frivolous compared to the things Richard Nixon does every day of his life, on purpose, as a matter of policy and a perfect expression of everything he stands for.Jesus! Where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be President?Hunter S. Thompson / quote ↗
15UndatedHow many more of these stinking, double-downer sideshows will we have to go through before we can get ourselves straight enough to put together some kind of national election that will give me and the at least 20 million people I tend to agree with a chance to vote FOR something, instead of always being faced with that old familiar choice between the lesser of two evils?Hunter S. Thompson / quote ↗
16UndatedHubert Humphrey is a treacherous, gutless old ward-heeler who should be put in a goddamn bottle and sent out with the Japanese current.Hunter S. Thompson / quote ↗
17UndatedIt 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 / quote ↗
18UndatedWhatever else the Florida primary might or might not have proved, it put a definite kink in the Media Theory of politics. It may be true, despite what happened to Lindsay and Muskie in Florida, that all you have to do to be President of the U.S.A. is look “attractive” on TV and have enough money to hire a Media Wizard. Only a fool or a linthead would argue with the logic at the root of the theory: If you want to sell yourself to a nation of TV addicts, you obviously can’t ignore the medium… but the Florida vote at least served to remind a lot of people that the medium is only a tool, not a magic eye. In other words, if you want to be President of the U.S.A. and you’re certified “attractive,” the only other thing you have to worry about when you lay out all that money for a Media Wizard is whether or not you’re hiring a good one instead of a bungler… and definitely lay off the Reds when you go to the studio.Hunter S. Thompson / quote ↗
19Undated...if that Watergate case ever gets into court, he might get very nervous.Hunter S. Thompson / quote ↗
20UndatedWho does vote for these dishonest shitheads? Who among us can be happy and proud of having all this innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine? These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid little rich kids like George Bush?They are the same ones who wanted to have Muhammad Ali locked up for refusing to kill gooks. They speak for all that is cruel and stupid and vicious in the American character. They are the racists and hate mongers among us -- they are the Ku Klux Klan. I piss down the throats of these Nazis.And I am too old to worry about whether they like it or not. Fuck them.Hunter S. Thompson / quote ↗
21UndatedHistory is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of “history” it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time—and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.Hunter S. Thompson / quote ↗
22UndatedI hate pain, despite my ability to tolerate it beyond all known parameters, which is not necessarily a good thing.Hunter S. Thompson / quote ↗
23UndatedPublishers are notoriously slothful about numbers, unless they're attached to dollar signs - unlike journalists, quarterbacks, and felony criminal defendants who tend to be keenly aware of numbers at all times.Hunter S. Thompson / quote ↗
24UndatedIt was almost May. I knew that New York was getting warm now, that London was wet, that Rome was hot -- and I was on Vieques, where it was always hot and where New York and London and Rome were just names on a map.Hunter S. Thompson / quote ↗
