Share this page: Myths and legends die hard in America. We love them for the extra dimension they provide the illusion of near-infinite possibility to erase the narrow confines of most men's reality. -- 'Those Daring Young Men in their Flying Machines... Ain't What They Used to Be!' (1969), in: The Great Shark Hunt (1979) Mainline gambling is a very heavy business -- and Las Vegas makes Reno seem like your friendly neighborhood grocery store. For a loser La Vegas is the meanest town on earth. -- Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1972) A week in Las Vegas is like stumbling into a Time Warp, a regression to the late fifties. Which is wholly understandable when you see the people who come here, the Big Spenders from places like Denver and Dallas. -- Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1972) A career politician finally smelling the White House is not much different from a bull elk in the rut. He will stop at nothing, trashing anything that gets in his way; and anything that he can't handle personally he will hire out -- or, failing that, make a deal. -- Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, '72 (1972) If I'd written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people -- including me -- would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism. -- 'Fear and Loathing at the Superbowl', Rolling Stone, 15 February 1973; also quoted in The Great Shark Hunt (Hunter S. Thompson, 1979). Going to trial with a lawyer who considers your life-style a Crime in Progress is not a happy prospect. -- 'A Letter to The Champion: a production of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers' (1990), in: Songs of the Doomed (1991) In a nation ruled by swine, all pigs are upwardly 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. We owe that to ourselves and our crippled self-image as something better than a nation of panicked sheep. -- 'Jacket Copy for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas', in: The Great Shark Hunt (1979) The Sixties were an era of extreme reality. I miss the smell of teargas. I miss the fear of getting beaten. -- Independent on Sunday (London), 12 October 1997 Share this page:

The selection of the above quotes and the writing of the accompanying notes was performed by the author David Paul Wagner. About Us • Contact Us • Privacy • Terms of Use © 2005-23 Wide World of Quotes. All Rights Reserved.