Hunter S. Thompson quotes page:
Speaking of the police... "They were probably nice people, and so was I--but we were not meant for each other. History had long since determined that. There is a huge body of evidence to support the notion that me and the police were put on this earth to do extremely different things and never to mingle professionally with each other, except at official functions, when we all wear ties and drink heavily and whoop it up like the natural, good-humored wild boys that we know in our hearts that we are.... These occasions are rare, but they happen--despite the forked tongue of fate that has put us forever on different paths...."
- HST excerpt from Fear and Loathing in Elko from Kingdom of Fear
"Anybody who acted happy on Christmas was lying--even the ones who were getting paid $500 an hour.... The Jews were especially sulky, and who could blame them? The birthday of Baby Jesus is always a nervous time for people who know that ninety days later they will be accused of murdering him."
- a few of HST's thoughts on Christmas from Kingdom of Fear
"It was a Different Time. People were Friendly. We trusted each other. Hell, you could afford to get mixed up with wild strangers in those days--without fearing for your life, or your eyes, or your organs, or all of your money or even getting locked up in prison forever. There was a sense of possibility. People were not so afraid, as they are now. You could run around naked without getting shot. You could check into a roadside motel on the outskirts of Ely or Winnemucca or Elko when you were lost in a midnight rainstorm--and nobody called the police on you, just to check out your credit and your employment history and your medical records and how many parking tickets you owed in California.
There were Laws, but they were not feared. There were Rules, but they were not worshiped... like Laws and Rules and Cops and Informants are feared and worshiped today."
- HST excerpt from Fear and Loathing in Elko from Kingdom of Fear
"We are At War now, according to President Bush, and I take him at his word. He also says this War might last for "a very long time." Generals and military scholars will tell you that 8 or 10 years is actually not such a long time in the span of human history--which is no doubt true--but history also tells us that 10 years of martial law and a wartime economy are going to feel like a Lifetime to people who are in their twenties today. The poor bastards of what will forever be known as Generation Z are doomed to be the first generation of Americans who will grow up with a lower standard of living than their parents enjoyed.
That is extremely heavy news, and it will take a while for it to sink in. The 22 babies born in New York City while the World Trade Center burned will never know what they missed. The last half of the 20th Century will seem like a wild party for rich kids, compared to what's coming now. The party's over, folks. The time has come for loyal Americans to Sacrifice... Sacrifice... Sacrifice. That is the new buzzword in Washington. But what it means is not entirely clear.
Winston Churchill said, "The first casualty of War is always Truth." Churchill also said, "In wartime, Truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of Lies."
That wisdom will not be much comfort to babies born last week. The first news they get in this world will be News subjected to Military Censorship. That is a given in wartime, along with massive campaigns of deliberately planted "Dis-information." That is routine behavior in Wartime--for all countries and all combatants--and it makes life difficult for people who value real news. Count on it. That is what Churchill meant when he talked about Truth being the first casualty of War.
In this case, however, the next casualty was Football. All games were canceled last week. And that has Never happened to the NFL. Never. That gives us a hint about the Magnitude of this War. Terrorists don't wear uniforms, and they play by inscrutable rules--The rules of World War III, which has already begun.
So get ready for it, folks. Buckle up and watch your backs at all times. That is why they call it "Terrorism."
- an excerpt from HST's writing on September 19th, 2001
"It would be easy to say that we owe it all to the Bush family from Texas, but that would be too simplistic. They are only errand boys for the vengeful, bloodthirsty cartel of raving Jesus-freaks and super-rich money mongers who have ruled this country for at least the last 20 years, and arguably for the past 200. They take orders well, and they don't ask too many questions.
The real power in America is held by a fast-emerging new Oil-garchy 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 don't mind admitting it. They worship money and power and death. Their ideal solution to all the nation's problems would be another 100 Year War.
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. 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."
- a portion of HST's "Memo from the Sports Desk" intro to Kingdom of Fear
"And so much for all that; I feel sorry for all of us. Your Chagrin Falls culture is amazingly similar to a big chunk of Aspen. About half the town is in hock to the Ski Corp. and the Tourist Bureau. "Independent" businessmen live in fear of "bad publicity," a "bad winter," "bad people in town," and god only knows what else. And they're all trying to screw each other out of every possible dollar. Never saying it quite like that, of course, but doing it all the same. A gang of cheap whores... again, like Humphrey, and Nixon. I've about given up in my efforts to buy this house and meadow I call home for the moment; the price went from $30,000 in May to $80,000 in September... and I figure I can do a lot better than that in Canada, without having to worry about being put in some kind of detention pen, as a dangerous anarchist heretic. Which I am, and I hope to get worse. If it comes down to a 'Which side are you on?' crunch, I think I'll go with the human beings. In clearer terms, I look forward to a split between the Corporate Nazis and the Desperate Freaks, with no middle ground... and, as much as I dread that kind of choice, it seems pretty clear and unavoidable. What do you think?"
- HST in a letter to younger brother Davison Thompson in October of 1968 from Fear and Loathing in America
"(Now... for the second phase of my memorandum, after a two-week delay. I was called to Washington, yes.... For an event of massive importance, a Medical First.... Heil! The first chief executive to grow from a dropped pile. I witnessed it all: the dropping, the growth--atavistic reversions and surgical victories--yes, and finally the Big Day, which I attempted to witness, but was driven off the parade route by a hail of garbage. Those schwein will pay, and pay dearly. We have ways...)
Ah, but I digress. Indeed, I took a trip, a brief vacation from the cheap unprincipled haggling that passes for news in this soldout valley. The Boss has been told about the dealing here, and his creature, Herr Hickel, has been instructed to study our methods and apply them, on a cost-efficient basis, to the mindless rape of almost everything else.
No other city in the nation can claim to represent both the vanguard and the rearguard of human endeavor. Nowhere else is the tax-structure so advanced and so flexible that the validity of any tax depends on the willingness of elected officials to settle all complaints on a civic-payoff basis. We are on the verge of establishing a really mind-staggering precedent in this area. I think it's wonderful--a tax is valid if the litigant can be bought off cheap, but otherwise--if the geek can hold out long enough--it may be unconstitutional. What better way to spread the Aspen Spirit?
...
Herr Barnard has told us all this in prophecy. I recall sitting at a gathering at the (Aspen) Institute sometime in the fall--a seminar, of sorts, on the "Future of Aspen," and the Mayor spoke up on the subject of sewage. The sewer system, he said, is approaching its "Hydraulic Limit," which is the point where the sewage starts flowing back to the point of origin--a reversal in the pipes.
Obviously, that Limit has come and gone. We are now awash in our own waste....And humor fails in the long shadow of that reality. Aspen is now Disneyland in the Snow, and to me that has a fine familiar ring: thirty years ago, in my time, we called it the Thousand Year Reich....And we did a lot of building."
- HST in a letter to the editor of the Aspen Times, October of 1968
" $191.62.....six days Continental Hotel, LA $21.33.....books on Calif & LA culture, Pickwick bkshop. $120.00.....all other expenses including meals, entertainment, tips, cabs, magazines and papers, etc. (except the following item) computed at $20.00 per day. $50.00 special "contribution" to Brown Power firebomb fund, as it were--absolutely necessary for access to this very nervous area of activity in east LA ghetto. This is a difficult item to explain on paper. Selah. $382.95 Total Thanks, Hunter S. Thompson"
- HST expense statement from March 1969 to Random House, his publisher for a then untitled book on the Death of the American Dream