Quotes by Hunter S. Thompson

Morality is temporary, wisdom is permanent.

So we shall let the reader answer this question for himself: who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?

She laughed. It wont last. Nothing lasts. But Im happy now.Happy, I muttered, trying to pin the word down. But it is one of those words, like Love, that I have never quite understood. Most people who deal in words dont have much faith in them and I am no exception--especially the big ones like Happy and Love and Honest and Strong. They are too elusive and far too relative when you compare them to sharp, mean little words like Punk and Cheap and Phony. I feel at home with these, because theyre scrawny and easy to pin, but the big ones are tough and it takes either a priest or a fool to use them with any confidence.

No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun — for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax — This wont hurt

The real power in America is held by a fast-emerging new Oligarchy of pimps and preachers who see no need for Democracy or fairness or even trees, except maybe the ones in their own yards, and they dont mind admitting it. They worship money and power and death. Their ideal solution to all the nations problems would be another 100 Year War.

I have no taste for either poverty or honest labor, so writing is the only recourse left for me.

Ive always considered writing the most hateful kind of work. I suspect its a bit like fucking — which is fun only for amateurs. Old whores dont do much giggling. Nothing is fun when you have to do it — over and over, again and again...

Music has always been a matter of Energy to me, a question of Fuel. Sentimental people call it Inspiration, but what they really mean is Fuel. I have always needed Fuel. I am a serious consumer. On some nights I still believe that a car with the gas needle on empty can run about fifty more miles if you have the right music very loud on the radio.

If youre going to be crazy, you have to get paid for it or else youre going to be locked up.

In a closed society where everybodys guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.

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

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

Call on God, but row away from the rocks.

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

What do you want? Wheres the goddamn ice I ordered? Wheres the booze? Theres a war on, man! People are being killed!

In 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.

The waitress had the appearance of a very old hooker who had finally found her place in life

Coming 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. Lets 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.

Writing is the flip side of sex - its only good when its over.

So much for Objective Journalism. Dont 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.