Hunter S. Thompson

“He talked about luck and fate and numbers coming up, yet he never ventured a nickel at the casinos because he knew the house had all the percentages. And beneath his pessimism, his bleak conviction that all the machinery was rigged against him, at the bottom of his soul was a faith that he was going to outwit it, that by carefully watching the signs he was going to know when to dodge and be spared. It was fatalism with a loophole, and all you had to do to make it work was never miss a sign. Survival by coordination, as it were. The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but to those who can see it coming and jump aside. Like a frog evading a shillelagh in a midnight marsh.”

“Marathon running, like golf, is a game for players, not winners. That is why Callaway sells golf clubs and Nike sells running shoes. But running is unique in that the world's best racers are on the same course, at the same time, as amateurs, who have as much chance of winning as your average weekend warrior would scoring a touchdown in the NFL.”

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

“If you're going to be crazy, you have to get paid for it or else you're going to be locked up.”

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

“I felt a little guilty about jangling the poor bugger's brains with that evil fantasy. But what the hell? Anybody who wanders around the world saying, "Hell yes, I'm from Texas," deserves whatever happens to him.”

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

“By any accepted standard, I have had more than nine lives. I counted them up once, and there were 13 times I almost and maybe should have died.”

“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.”

“The Hell's Angels try not to do anything halfway, and anyone who deals in extremes is bound to cause trouble, whether he means to or not. This, along with a belief in total retaliation for any offense or insult, is what makes the Hell's Angels unmanageable for the police and morbidly fascinating to the general public.”

“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.”

“The brutal reality of politics would be probably intolerable without drugs.”

“I have long understood that losing always comes with the territory when you wander into the gambling business, just as getting crippled for life is an acceptable risk in the linebacker business. They both are extremely violent sports, and pain is part of the bargain. Buy the ticket, take the ride.”

“Life has become immeasurably better since I have been forced to stop taking it seriously.”

“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.”

“Without gambling, I would not exist.”

“Liberalism itself has failed, and for a pretty good reason. It has been too often compromised by the people who represented it.”

“The person who doesn't scatter the morning dew will not comb gray hairs.”

“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 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.”

“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.”