Quotes

The objections which have been broughtagainst a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government.

I heartily accept the motto, “That governmentis best which governs least”; and I shouldlike to see it acted up to more rapidly andsystematically. Carried out, it finally amounts tothis, which also I believe,—” That governmentis best which governs not at all”; and whenmen are prepared for it, that will be the kind ofgovernment which they will have.

Perchance, coming generations will not abide the dissolution of the globe, but, availing themselves of future inventions in aerial locomotion, and the navigation of space, theentire race may migrate from the earth, tosettle some vacant and more western planet. . . . It took but little art, a simple applicationof natural laws, a canoe, a paddle, and a sail ofmatting, to people the isles of the Pacific, anda little more will people the shining isles ofspace.

I am a parcel of vain strivings tied

I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone . . . but they’ve always worked for me.

The TV business . . . is normally perceived assome kind of cruel and shallow money trenchthrough the heart of the journalism industry, along plastic hallway where thieves and pimpsrun free and good men die like dogs, for nogood reason.

Gonzo journalism . . . is a style of “reporting” based on William Faulkner’s idea that the best fiction is far more true than any kind of journalism—and the best journalists have always known this.

It is Nixon himself who represents thatdark, venal, and incurably violent side of the American character almost every other country in the world has learned to fear and despise.

We were somewhere around Barstow on theedge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.

No point mentioning those bats, I thought. The poor bastard will see them soon enough.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Viewed from the distance of the moon, theastonishing thing about the earth . . . is that it is alive. . . . Aloft, floating free beneath the moist, gleaming membrane of bright blue sky, is therising earth, the only exuberant thing in this part of the cosmos. . . . It has the organized, self-contained look of a live creature, full ofinformation, marvelously skilled in handling the sun.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,

I read somewhere of a shepherd who, whenasked why he made, from within fairy rings, ritual observances to the moon to protect his flocks, replied: I’d be a damn fool if I didn’t!These poems, with all their crudities, doubts, and confusions, are written for the love of Man and in praise of God, and I’d be a damn fool if they weren’t.

And I must enter again the round

Deep with the first dead lies London’s daughter,

And there could I marvel my birthday

O may my heart’s truth

A child’s

And I rose

But for the lovers, their arms

When All My Five and Country Senses See.

I see the boys of summer in their ruin

In my lifetime all the problems have come from mainland Europe and all the solutions havecome from the English-speaking nations across the world.

[ Of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev :] We can do business together.

The President of the Commission, Mr. Delors, said at a press conference the other day thathe wanted the European Parliament to be thedemocratic body of the Community, he wantedthe Commission to be the Executive and hewanted the Council of Ministers to be theSenate. No. No. No.

[ Of the Irish Republican Army bombing inBrighton intended to assassinate her :] This was the day I was meant not to see.

We know we can do it—we haven’t lost the ability. That is the Falklands Factor.

They’ve [the Labor Government] got the usual Socialist disease—they’ve run out of other people’s money.

[ On the reconquest of South Georgia in the Falklands War :] Just rejoice at that news and congratulate our forces and the Marines. Rejoice!

When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, all things being particles ofa real and rhythmic whole. We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance. Not only this, butthrough television and telephony we shall seeand hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face, despite intervening distances of thousands of miles; and the instrumentsthrough which we shall be able to do thiswill be amazingly simple compared with ourpresent telephone. A man will be able to carryone in his vest pocket.

In the twenty-first century the robot will takethe place which slave labor occupied in ancientcivilization.

Ere many generations pass, our machinery willbe driven by a power obtainable at any point of the universe. . . . Throughout space there is energy . . . it is a mere question of time when men will succeed in attaching their machinery to the very wheelwork of nature.

I die because I do not die.

They told him that their ancestors had fled the disorders of Ch’in times and, havingtaken refuge here with wives and childrenand neighbors, had never ventured out again; consequently they had lost all contact with the outside world.

Much wished, hoped little, and demanded nought.

[ Response to the tsar of Russia’s criticism of those who “betrayed the cause of Europe” :] That, Sire, is a question of dates.

[ Of Napoleon’s costly victory at the Battle of Borodino, 1812 :] C’est le commencement de la fin . This is the beginning of the end.

Economic, financial, and political predictors . . . are quite ashamed to say anything outlandish to their clients—and yet events, it turns out, are almost always outlandish .

You can do anything with bayonets except sit on them.

On the seashore of endless worlds children meet. Tempest roams in the pathless sky, ships are wrecked in the trackless water, death is abroad and children play. On the seashore of endless worlds is the great meeting of children.

Our world is dominated by the extreme, the unknown, and the very improbable(improbable according to our current knowledge)—and all the while we spend our time engaged in small talk, focusing on the known, and the repeated.

I heard the little bird say so.

The other day we had a long discourse with[Lady Orkney] about love; and she told us asaying . . . which I thought excellent, that inmen, desire begets love ; and in women, love begetsdesire .

I’m going to the Land of Nod.

Although reason were intended by Providenceto govern our passions, yet it seems that, in two points of the greatest moment to the being and continuance of the world, God hath intendedour passions to prevail over reason. The first is, the propagation of our species, since no wiseman ever married from the dictates of reason.The other is, the love of life, which, from the dictates of reason, every man would despise, and wish it at an end, or that it never had abeginning.

The Sight of you is good for sore Eyes.

There was all the World, and his Wife.