Quotes on Fear And Loathing

There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge.

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

Buy the ticket, take the ride.

History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of "history" it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody understands at the time--and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.

The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. And I knew we'd get into that rotten stuff pretty soon. Probably at the next gas station.

Just sick enough to be totally confident

It's a strange world. Some people get rich and others eat sh** and die.

Do not look upon this world with fear and loathing. Bravely face whatever the gods offer.

I shared a vagrant optimism that some of us were making real progress, that we had taken an honest road, and that the best of us would inevitably make it over the top. At the same time, I felt that the life we were leading was a lost cause, that we were all actor, kidding ourselves on a senseless odyssey. It was the tension between those two poles - a restless idealism on one hand and a sense of impending doom on the other - that kept me going.

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.

No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride...and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well...maybe chalk it off to forced conscious expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten.

The Edge... there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.

Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!

Too weird to live, and too rare to die.

Not everybody is comfortable with the idea that politics is a guilty addiction. But it is.

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

I felt like a monster reincarnation of Horatio Alger: A man on the move, and just sick enough to be totally confident.

There was madness in any direction, at any hour. You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning.

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.

No, this is not a good town for psychedelic drugs. Reality itself is too twisted.