Hunter S. Thompson Quotes

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.

The trouble with Nixon is that he’s a serious politics junkie. He’s totally hooked and like any other junkie, he’s a bummer to have around, especially as President.

The only difference between the sane and the insane is that the sane have the power to lock up the insane.

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.

That was always the difference between Muhammad Ali and the rest of us. He came, he saw, and if he didn’t entirely conquer – he came as close as anybody we are likely to see in the lifetime of this doomed generation.

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.

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

All the blood is drained out of democracy – it dies – when only half the population votes.

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.

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.

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.

In my heart, I am always a Raider.

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 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.

All gamblers lose regularly, but they rarely discuss it in public. Losing is bad for the image, dude. Nobody buys Hot Tips from Losers. Remember that.

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

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.

I have always hated bowling, and I don’t mind admitting it.

The writer must be a participant in the scene… like a film director who writes his own scripts, does his own camera work, and somehow manages to film himself in action, as the protagonist or at least the main character.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I don’t think that my kind of journalism has ever been universally popular. It’s lonely out here.

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

There might be some serious fun in politics.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

I guess that’s one of the things about growing up in the fifties – it never occurred to me that you wouldn’t be at least as successful as your parents.

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.

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

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?

Jack Kerouac influenced me quite a bit as a writer… in the Arab sense that the enemy of my enemy was my friend.

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

Democracy as a system has evolved into something that Thomas Jefferson didn’t anticipate.

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.

There is always room for losers in the football business. They are the mother’s milk of gambling, and why not? Somebody has to do it, or there won’t be any winners.

Without gambling, I would not exist.

Nixon was no more a saint than he was a great president.

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

Buy the ticket, take the ride.

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.

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

Freedom is something that dies unless it’s used.

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

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.

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

Some may never live, but the crazy never die.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.