Hunter S. Thompson

There are many harsh lessons to be learned from the gambling experience, but the harshest one of all is the difference between having Fun and being Smart.

The only thing wrong with the NBA - or any other professional sport, for that matter - is a wild epidemic of Dumbness and overweening Greed. There is no Mystery about it, and no need to change any rules.

I am an Addictive Personality, they say, a natural slave to passion - and many Doctors have warned me against it. I am a High-risk Patient.

One thing I have learned in my painful career as a gambler is that bragging when you get lucky and win a few games will plunge you into gloom and unacceptable beatings very soon. It happens every time.

Victory is a fleeting thing in the gambling business. Today's winners are tomorrow's blinking toads, dumb beasts with no hope.

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

All the blood is drained out of democracy - it dies - when only half the population votes.

I've already become a mastodon in print - I don't see a consciousness for my kind of journalism.

I was 22 when JFK was murdered, and I will never recover from it... Never.

Nixon was no more a saint than he was a great president.

I wasn't trying to be an outlaw writer. I never heard of that term; somebody else made it up. But we were all outside the law: Kerouac, Miller, Burroughs, Ginsberg, Kesey; I didn't have a gauge as to who was the worst outlaw. I just recognized allies: my people.

Democracy as a system has evolved into something that Thomas Jefferson didn't anticipate.

Going to trial with a lawyer who considers your whole life-style a Crime in Progress is not a happy prospect.

Rush Limbaugh is a lame professional swine, and he makes a good living at it. He is like a hired geek in some traveling backwoods carnival - the freaks who bite the heads off chickens - but Limbaugh is a modernized geek who thinks he can bite the heads off of people.

Remember this, folks - I am a Hillbilly, and I don't always Bet the same way I talk. Good advice is one thing, but smart gambling is quite another.

Fiction is based on reality unless you're a fairytale artist.

The world is still a weird place, despite my efforts to make clear and perfect sense of it.

I am a professional sportswriter, among other things, and I take the games seriously. It is only one of my many powerful addictions, and I don't mind admitting any of them.

Without gambling, I would not exist.

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