Top 500 Hunter S. Thompson Quotes (2026 Update)
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101. “But after a while you learn to cope with things like seeing your dead grandmother crawling up your leg with a knife in her teeth. Most acid fanciers can handle this sort of thing.”

— Hunter S. Thompson

102. “Sane is rich and powerful. Insane is wrong and poor and weak. The rich are free, the poor are put in cages. Res Ipsa Loquitur, amen. Mahalo.”

— Hunter S. Thompson

103. “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.”

— Hunter S. Thompson

104. “God’s mercy on you degenerate swine.”

— Hunter S. Thompson

105. “What passed for society was a loud, giddy whirl of thieves and pretentious hustlers, a dull sideshow full of quacks and clowns and philistines with gimp mentalities.”

— Hunter S. Thompson

106. “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

107. “With the truth so dull and depressing, the only working alternative is wild bursts of madness and filigree.”

— Hunter S. Thompson

108. “I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours.”

— Hunter S. Thompson

109. “No one holds command over me. No man. No god. No Prince. What is a claim of age for ones who are immortal? What is a claim of power for ones who defy death? Call your damnable hunt. We shall see whom I drag screaming to hell with me.”

— Hunter S. Thompson

110. “I am a road man for the lords of karma.”

— Hunter S. Thompson

Featured in: Karma Quotes

111. “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

112. “At the top of the mountain we are all snow leopards.”

— Hunter S. Thompson

113. “Avoid being seized by the police. The cops are not your friends. Don’t tell them anything.”

— Hunter S. Thompson

114. “Paranoia is just another mask for ignorance. The truth, when you finally chase it down is almost always far worse than your darkest visions and fears.”

— Hunter S. Thompson

115. “In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone.”

— Hunter S. Thompson

116. “Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.”

— Hunter S. Thompson

117. “The association of motorcycles with LSD is no accident of publicity. They are both a means to an end, to the place of definitions.”

— Hunter S. Thompson

118. “What the hell is the sense of trying to hold the Democratic party together, if it’s really a party of expediency, something that’s put together every four years?”

— Hunter S. Thompson

119. “I was never idle long enough to do much thinking, but I felt somehow that my instincts were right.”

— Hunter S. Thompson

120. “Fiction is based on reality unless you’re a fairy-tale artist, you have to get your knowledge of life from somewhere. You have to know the material you’re writing about before you alter it.”

— Hunter S. Thompson

121. “Have an objective to give your bender a theme. For instance, stalking and killing a wild pig with a bowie knife.”

— Hunter S. Thompson

122. “These things happen. One day you run everything, and the next day you run like a dog.”

— Hunter S. Thompson

123. “Even a blind pig finds an acorn now and then.”

— Hunter S. Thompson

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

— Hunter S. Thompson

125. “When you push a car off a cliff and blow it up, be sure to roll the windows down to avoid shrapnel. Also, strip the license plate so you’re not billed for the cleanup.”

— Hunter S. Thompson

126. “A word to the wise is infuriating.”

— Hunter S. Thompson

127. “Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven. – John Milton, Paradise Lost.”

— Hunter S. Thompson

128. “As your attorney, it is my duty to inform you that it is not important that you understand what I’m doing or why you’re paying me so much money. What’s important is that you continue to do so.”

— Hunter S. Thompson

129. “Those of us that had been up all night were in no mood for coffee and donuts, we wanted strong drink. We were, after all, the cream of the national sporting press.”

— Hunter S. Thompson

Featured in: Strong Quotes

130. “It was one of those fine little love stories that can make you smile in your sleep at night.”

— Hunter S. Thompson

131. “Graffiti is beautiful; like a brick in the face of a cop.”

— Hunter S. Thompson

132. “Don’t judge your taco by its price.”

— Hunter S. Thompson

133. “I’m a relatively respectable citizen. Multiple felon perhaps, but certainly not dangerous.”

— Hunter S. Thompson

134. “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 won’t hurt.”

— Hunter S. Thompson

Featured in: Fun Quotes

135. “Of Richard M. Nixon: A foul caricature of himself, a man with no soul, no inner convictions, with the integrity of a hyena and the style of a poison toad.”

— Hunter S. Thompson

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

— Hunter S. Thompson

137. “Insanity is a legal term. Crazy is an art form.”

— Hunter S. Thompson

138. “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

139. “The reason most people play golf is to wear clothes they would not be caught dead in otherwise.”

— Hunter S. Thompson

140. “There are times, however, and this is one of them, when even being right feels wrong. What do you say, for instance, about a generation that has been taught that rain is poison and sex is death?”

— Hunter S. Thompson

141. “Fear is just another word for ignorance.”

— Hunter S. Thompson

142. “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

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

— Hunter S. Thompson

144. “An outlaw can be defined as somebody who lives outside the law, beyond the law and not necessarily against it.”

— Hunter S. Thompson

145. “There is something fresh and crisp about the first hours of a Caribbean day, a happy anticipation that something is about to happen, maybe just up the street or around the next corner.”

— Hunter S. Thompson

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

146. “Few people understand the psychology of dealing with a highway traffic cop.”

— Hunter S. Thompson

147. “What kind of rat bastard psychotic would play that song- right now, at this moment?”

— Hunter S. Thompson

148. “Fiction is a bridge to the truth that journalism can’t reach.”

— Hunter S. Thompson

149. “They don’t hardly make ’em like him any more – but just to be on the safe side, he should be castrated anyway.”

— Hunter S. Thompson

150. “Things are no longer what they seem to be. My telephones are haunted, and animals whisper at me from unseen places.”

— Hunter S. Thompson