Russell Brand Quotes

When you fall in love you recognise you're not the most important person in the world, and your focus becomes another person. ~ Russell Brand

People don't throw your bags out of windows because of lies; they throw them out because of the truth. ~ Russell Brand

Right, we've got these institutions of media, these financial institutions, we have the means of distribution, we have the means of production, we have all these markets and maxims in place. How do we alter the consciousness, the fundamental unifying field? How do we influence change on that level to all of the world? ~ Russell Brand

Even in name, he seems like a Victorian oddity. "Igor, fetch 'the Crouch' from the catacombs, we're going to the graveyard". ~ Russell Brand

It's highly psychological, and very beautiful, and overwhelming, and real, and trippy! ~ Russell Brand

Be the change you wish to see in the world," said Gandhi. If you want a nonviolent world, you cannot use violence to achieve it. He also said, "In the end the British will walk out because 100,000 British cannot control 350 million Indians if those Indians refuse to cooperate. ~ Russell Brand

Are there things about yourself which you have never told anyone? Way back upon the creaky floors of your childhood, in your solitude, the shadows of your private mind, the things you've done and said and thought that compound and contain you: shameful things, sexual things, often solitary acts, but sometimes not, sometimes agonizing stabs of cruelty you've inflicted on people you love, or the moments where reality itself seemed to tear as they looked into your eyes and told you 'you are nothing'. And for a moment you stand there adjusting to the pain, the pain that someone could say that to you, and what that must mean about who you are. ~ Russell Brand

I was like Elvis "The Pelvis" Presley on Ed Sullivan, I tells ya, punished for the crime of being sexy. (him on the telly , me in a dingy alley ... any analogy will break down under scrutiny.) ~ Russell Brand

For me, it's standard. I don't feel irresponsible for telling kids not to vote; I feel like I deserve a Blue Peter badge for not telling them to riot. For not telling them that they are entitled to destroy the cathedrals of tyranny erected to mock them in the heart of their community. That they should rise up and destroy the system that imprisons them, ignores them, condemns and maligns them. By any means necessary. ~ Russell Brand

Mark Twain, the thinking man's Colonel Sanders, reputedly said, America is New York, New Orleans, and San Francisco. Everywhere else is Cleveland. ~ Russell Brand

An astronomer once explained to me that the galaxy we live in, the Milky Way, is vast, too vast to be understood without metaphor, so he gave me one. He said if you picture the Milky Way as being the size of mainland Europe, our solar system - that's Mars, Venus, Saturn, us here on Earth (you remember from school) - in a Milky Way the size of Europe our solar system would fit inside a single teacup somewhere in Belgium. He paused for my amazement, which I duly offered. But really what can you say? "Ooh, a teacup." "Blimey, Belgium." "Cor, it makes you think, doesn't it?" Then he added, clearly sensing I was at a bit of a loss for words, having just been reduced to a dot on a speck in a teacup in a continent: "Russell, there are 400 million KNOWN galaxies in our universe. ~ Russell Brand

People have always said, are you gay? I've had a lot of that. But it's just not in me. I really like women a lot; I'm repulsed by men sexually. ~ Russell Brand

I get fixated when I'm bleeding
I can see why they went in for blood-letting in the medieval times because it makes you feel a bit better. When I cut myself, the drama of it calms me down. ~ Russell Brand

I've always had this impulse to be destructive. ~ Russell Brand

Tumbling into a dark, Lewis Carroll labyrinth of filth, pursuing a white rabbit of smut! ~ Russell Brand

We are living in a zoo, or more accurately a farm, our collective consciousness, our individual consciousness, has been hijacked by a power structure that needs us to remain atomized and disconnected. We want union, we want connection, we need it the way we need other forms of nutrition, and denied it we delve into the lower impulses for sanctuary. ~ Russell Brand

In this [show] business you do something rock 'n' roll and then that's it, finished, heads roll. It's best not to take drugs, go to sex dungeons or cause controversy. And those who've done it - Russell Brand, Angus Deayton, whoever - they've really paid for it, even if what they've done is quite trivial. ~ Konnie Huq

How does someone who has never been a father become one? How do any of us progress beyond our temporary limits? The potential person we can become hums in an invisible grid within and without us. A genius may actuate by intuition but all of us need heroes, role models, and mentors, that we may see what is possible, living mandalas to lock onto as we inhale and expand into new states. ~ Russell Brand

When people are content they are difficult to manoeuvre. We are perennially discontent and offered placebos as remedies. ~ Russell Brand

One of the great sadnesses of modern life, because of our disenfranchisement and disillusionment with religion, is that we don't have access to these ideas. Yoga and meditation, for me, is a way of, in this secular world, accessing very very beautiful principles that would perhaps make us happier, at a time when people feel disillusioned with the economy, concerned about the ecology, worried with politicians, and don't trust what they're being told on television. ~ Russell Brand

I recognize that I have the ability to be selfish, but I also recognize that you can't be happy if you only care about yourself at the expense of other people. ~ Russell Brand

We have learned that violence as a means is always unsuccessful ~ Russell Brand

There's no biological reason why a man shouldn't just try to have sex with every woman he meets - all of them get pregnant and your genetics are winning. ~ Russell Brand

Have you considered that the Bible, like all religious doctrine, may be allegorical and symbolic, to direct us toward one holy entity of love, as opposed to a simplistic litiginous text to direct the behavior of human beings? ~ Russell Brand

I have no power at all over people, places and things, and if I ever for a moment mistakenly believe that I do, and act as if I do, pain is on its way. ~ Russell Brand

I'm a recovering drug addict, so it's not a subject that I take lightly, but I do agree that the criminalization of narcotics is the deliberate inhibition of human consciousness. ~ Russell Brand

I do transcendental meditation, which is, I suppose, derived from Vedic or Ayurvedic principles, which is sort of Hindu principles. ~ Russell Brand

I'm into yoga, I meditate all the time, I'm vegetarian. ~ Russell Brand

I've come off heroin twice, and the worst part is laying in bed kicking and not being able to keep still. The physical withdrawal doesn't last that long, but then it's just all psychological. I think it's worse than cigarettes. ~ Russell Brand

Princeton University recently did a study revealing what those of us paying attention already know all too well: The United States is, in scientifically proven fact, not a democracy. They concluded that the U.S. is controlled by economic elites. This is a prominent idea that is becoming popular. The structural reason that voting is redundant is that through the funding of political parties, lobbying, and cronyism, corporations are able to ensure that their interests are prioritized above the needs of the electorate and that ideas that contravene their agenda don't even make it into the sphere of public debate. Whoever you vote for, you'll be voting for a party that represents a big-business agenda, not the will of the people. ~ Russell Brand

I've been wanting to tell people my theory about what goes on after time. It's beyond our consciousness. We get glimpses of it between the infrared and the ultraviolet - the narrow narrow corridor of light that we are able to perceive. ~ Russell Brand

Animals, children, and the working class comprise the company in which I'll feel most at ease. ~ Russell Brand

I don't see why someone should lose their life just so you can have a snack. ~ Russell Brand

That you can never base a relationship on the hope that the other person will some day change. You are in a relationship with the person as they are today. If they want to change themselves then that's encouraging but you will never change them. ~ Russell Brand

I struggle in these situations not to let my madness govern me, and to let the positive aspects of my character define my life. ~ Russell Brand

I cannot control the past but I can control the present through forgiveness. ~ Russell Brand

It doesn't matter how many pairs of shoes you have, how many cars you have, etc ... It's all utterly meaningless and yet we continue to pursue this. Why? Because they've learned they can stimulate our primal desires through selling us products. ~ Russell Brand

The mentality and behavior of drug addicts and alcoholics is wholly irrational until you understand that they are completely powerless over their addiction and unless they have structured help, they have no hope. ~ Russell Brand

Normally, I'm good at first dates, 'cause that's the only date I ever have, so I know how to control it and be confident. ~ Russell Brand

A counsellor at the treatment centre where I got clean, herself a woman in recovery, surprised me when she said, 'How clever of you to find drugs. Well done, you found a way to keep yourself alive.' This made me feel quite tearful. I suppose because this woman, Jackie, didn't judge me or tell me I was stupid or tubthumpingly declare that 'drugs kill'. No, she told me that I had done well by finding something that made being me bearable… To be acknowledged as a person who was in pain and fighting to survive in my own muddled-up and misguided way made me feel optimistic and understood. It is an example of the compassion addicts need from one another in order to change. ~ Russell Brand

If you've got any concern at all about animal welfare, you've got to not eat meat. ~ Russell Brand

When I was growing up, I thought I'd be a lot happier if I was famous and successful and if I had money. ~ Russell Brand

As long as we prioritize material truths over spiritual truths we will live in tyranny because we are living an illusion ~ Russell Brand

Page 3 is a crazy concept whereby for no discernable reason, a national newspaper prints a photograph of a young woman showing her tits. I'd object but I'm too enamoured with the boobs ... ~ Russell Brand

It was in these sessions that I first came across the "To my shame" technique ... You can get away with any admission, however appalling, so long as it's preceded by the words "to my shame."
... The self-accusatory prefix robs the listener of the right to disapprove ...
SANS "TO MY SHAME."
I used to exploit women because I couldn't cope with being alone ...
CORRECT RESPONSE. He didn't say "to my shame!" You bastard! You viscious selfish bastard.
It's like "Simon Says" for junkies. ~ Russell Brand

Eckhart Tolle says, "Addiction begins with pain and ends with pain," meaning that pain is behind compulsive behavior. Eleven years clean, I still feel the urge to medicate pain. Whenever events don't go my way, my first instinct is to annul the feeling, to look for an external resource to solve the problem. The second part of Eckhart's edict kicks in here - addiction "ends with pain." Medication of any kind offers only a temporary solution; it always leads back to pain and becomes therefore predictably cyclical. ~ Russell Brand

The world is awash with colours unseen and abuzz with unheard frequencies. Undetected and disregarded. The wise have always known that these inaccessible realms, these dimensions that cannot be breached by our beautifully blunt senses, hold the very codes to our existence, the invisible, electromagnetic foundations upon which our gross reality clumsily rests. ~ Russell Brand

If anyone knows a bit about history and fashion, you know it was Hugo Boss who made uniforms for the Nazis--but they looked fucking fantastic, let's face it, while they were killing people on the basis of their religion and sexuality. ~ Russell Brand

The thing for me is, what if one returns to these maxims, these rather simplistic maxims "Be the change you want to see in the world." Because what canvas have we but the self for these kind of explorations, ultimately. ~ Russell Brand

Then, of course, through the umbilical link we all tumble backwards down the spiralling DNA staircase to one common ancestor in Africa, and before that some bunch of curious monkeys. Down and down we go unto the sea, unto the dust, the single cellular dust. What impulse drove one cell to become two? What yearning pulled the fish on to the land? What caused apes to walk upright? Some invisible magnetic pull. Is there a difference between attraction and intention? Where is evolution taking us? ~ Russell Brand

I think, you're not blagging me on this ridiculous journey, with this bit of paper. I think if you want to change things, it's not with an X on a piece of paper, it's with an X on someone's forehead. ~ Russell Brand

I don't like to be in delineated moments. I don't like it when your reality feels prescriptive. I don't like Christmas holidays and their pseudo-joy. I don't like New Year's Eve. I don't like anything that feels like an established electromagnetic paradigm is pulling you into it's cliched forebear's footsteps. ~ Russell Brand

I didn't take a job on Fox News because I'm interested in progress. I'm interested in shouting and pointing and simplifying things! ~ Russell Brand

Of all the consumer products, chewing gum is perhaps the most ridiculous: it literally has no nourishment – you just chew it to give yourself something to do with your stupid idiot Western mouth.

Half the world is starving, and the other's going, 'I don't actually need any nutrition, but it would be good to masticate, just to keep my mind off things. ~ Russell Brand

Perhaps if we could popularise through the techniques of branding and consumerism, a different idea, a different narrative, perhaps the world can change. After all it changes constantly and incessantly, it's just the perceptions that we have are governed by people with self-interest and are not inalignment with the health and safety of us as individuals or as a planet. ~ Russell Brand

Anyone who's been poor and gets rich is stalked by guilt and fear. Guilt because you know it isn't fair, that life hasn't changed for everyone ~ Russell Brand

On respect for the Queen: When I lick a stamp I always do it with my eyes closed. ~ Russell Brand

All penguins are the same below the surface, which I think is as perfect an analogy as we're likely to get for the futility of racism. ~ Russell Brand

As a person ... I'm a little more doubtful, introspective and analytical. ~ Russell Brand

I don't like doing anything that makes you sweat if you don't come at the end of it. ~ Russell Brand

Some people were just getting on with their lives, chatting, being young. It simply wouldn't do. ~ Russell Brand

Turns out it was mostly a lie. But, at least for a short while, it was a beautiful one. ~ Russell Brand

As a producer, you've got to be involved in helping out with solving problems. ~ Russell Brand

I'm buying things for people I don't even know. I'm like Willy Wonka, but more manipulative. Imagine if Willy Wonka had a devious goal. ~ Russell Brand

The priority of any addict is to anaesthetise the pain of living to ease the passage of day with some purchased relief. ~ Russell Brand

And drinking neat liquor from the bottle, with all my long hair and my shirt undone and my beads, not so much the lizard king, more a gecko duchess, I fitted in nicely with their idea of what a creative person should be. ~ Russell Brand

Well this all seems like a bit of a storm in a teacup! ~ Russell Brand

You've seen their logo - it's an apple with a bite taken out of it. That bite is the symbol of the moment mankind broke their pact with God, transgressed their own innocent nature, and chewed into consuming and consumerism. We have externalized all wonder, materialized our inherent magic. ~ Russell Brand

Managing wildlife? It's wild! It don't need managing, leave it alone. ~ Russell Brand

I have never voted. Like most people I am utterly disenchanted by politics. Like most people I regard politicians as frauds and liars and the current political system as nothing more than a bureaucratic means for furthering the augmentation and advantages of economic elites. ~ Russell Brand

Companies' motives to make profit means they neglect inherent social or moral values. ~ Russell Brand

We are imprisoned within, hypnotized without, denying ourselves access to the internal peace and external harmony. Can we execute the perfect jailbreak when we have become our own jailers? ~ Russell Brand

I used to binge-eat and make myself throw up. I was a fat kid. Obviously I didn't quite master the bulimia. ~ Russell Brand

Rituals are missing nowadays ~ Russell Brand

I also do a lot of Kundalini yoga. ~ Russell Brand

Our basic fundamental desires are overly stimulated. A friend of mine said, "you have a generation of people that have been accidentally marketed to." ~ Russell Brand

Amy [Winehouse] increasingly became defined by her addiction. Our media though is more interested in tragedy than talent, so the ink began to defect from praising her gift to chronicling her downfall. The destructive personal relationships, the blood soaked ballet slippers, the aborted shows, that YouTube madness with the baby mice. In the public perception this ephemeral tittle-tattle replaced her timeless talent. This and her manner in our occasional meetings brought home to me the severity of her condition. Addiction is a serious disease; it will end with jail, mental institutions, or death. ~ Russell Brand

My life is just a series of embarrassing incidents strung together by telling people about those embarrassing incidents. ~ Russell Brand

The police force in America pledge to "protect and serve." That would actually be dandy if it were happening. Bill Hicks used to joke that he'd like to hijack a typically unpunctual plane and force it to go to its scheduled destination on time. ~ Russell Brand

I want to change the world, and do something valuable and beautiful. I want people to remember me before I'm dead, and then more afterwards. ~ Russell Brand

Since Steve Jobs died I cannot bear to see anyone use an iPhone irreverently, what I did was a tribute to his memory. ~ Russell Brand

People don't realize that the future is just now, but later. ~ Russell Brand

I live in negotiation with a shadow side that has to be respected. ~ Russell Brand

Her death had a powerful impact on me I suppose because it was such an obvious shock, like watching someone for hours through a telescope advance towards you, fist extended with the intention of punching you in the face. Even though I saw it coming it still hurt when it eventually hit me. ~ Russell Brand

The condition in extreme is identifiable but the less obvious version of addiction is still painful and arguably worse because we simply adapt to living in pain. ~ Russell Brand

I think that there is an infinite creative force that generates all consciousness and all matter and we are all connected and if you align yourself with this infinite creative force then you can be positive and you can be beautiful, I don't think its a person or god , I don't believe in any particular doctrine or dogma, only that humanity is connected. ~ Russell Brand

The next industrial revolution is toward decentralized, autonomous, and resilient systems where individuals and communities control their own destinies. This requires a transformation of our economic model from privatized control to co-operative models of ownership, which the social technologies of the Internet can facilitate. ~ Russell Brand

In Maslow's pyramid of needs, Abraham Maslow demonstrates the hierarchy of human requirements, most basic at the bottom, in a diagram. If you ask me, putting people's most basic requirements in a pyramid is bloody exclusive in the first place.They're extremely difficult to build, only pharoahs are allows in them and Indiana Jones was very nearly killed trying to get the treasure out. ~ Russell Brand

Thus another friendship was dashed on the cruel rocks amid the storm of my self-destruction. ~ Russell Brand

I really love to be with people. It's nice, that. To have achieved sudden intimacy with strangers is perhaps the most human thing you can do. We all love our friends and families, as much as we hate them. When you can achieve intimacy with strangers, it's very exciting and heartening. ~ Russell Brand

When I first became famous in the United Kingdom it was helpful because it meant there wasn't a spite of 'this bloke's a drug addict,' 'this bloke f**ks all these women' because I was just making jokes about all those things already, so it made me some kind of incorruptible indefatigable, indestructible force. ~ Russell Brand

So we are not discussing whether or not debt cancellation is a possibility; we know it is, we've seen it, they've done it. All we are discussing is who it is possible for. Them or us. I've just typed myself into a revolutionary fervor again. Every so often the fury at injustice rises up in me and makes me want to smash something or burn something, but nothing in my immediate environment belongs to me so I have to refrain. ~ Russell Brand

What I've learnt - to my cost - on several occasions in my life, is that people will put up with all manner of bad behaviour so long as you're giving them what they want. They'll laugh and get into it and enjoy the anecdotes and the craziness and the mayhem as long as you're going your job well, but the minute you're not, you're fucked. They'll wipe their hands of you without a second glance. ~ Russell Brand

I hope it is not necessary for me to stress the platonic nature of our relationship- not platonic in the purest sense, there was no philosophical discourse, but we certainly didn't fuck, which is usually what people mean by platonic; which I bet would really piss Plato off, that for all his thinking and chatting his name has become an adjective for describing sexless trysts. ~ Russell Brand

In the end the British will walk out because 100,000 British cannot control 350 million Indians if those Indians refuse to cooperate. A small minority cannot control an uncooperative majority, so they must be distracted, divided, tyrannized, or anesthetized into compliance. Gandhi dealt with the colonization of nations by nations; we deal now with the colonization of consciousness by corporations. ~ Russell Brand

Anything you don't want discard, anything that hurts let go. None of it's real you know, all that pain, all that regret, all that doubt, not thin enough, not a good enough mum, not a good enough son, not a good enough bum. You are enough, you're enough. there's nothing you can buy or try on that's going to make you any better, because you couldn't be any better than you are. ~ Russell Brand

The most annoying person on the BBC is Russell Brand, I've actually been close up to that boy. He smells like when you mix garlic with coffee and alcohol. I'm just saying when you get close to him, he could do with a bit of Sure For Men, he stinks. ~ Noel Gallagher

The only systems we can afford to employ are those that rationally serve the planet first, then all humanity. Not out of some woolly, bullshit tree-hugging piffle but because we live on it, currently without alternatives. ~ Russell Brand

Society is collapsing, and people are starting to recognize that the reason they feel like they're mentally ill is that they're living in a system that's not designed to suit the human spirit. ~ Russell Brand

I deplore those long brown curly fingernail folk. I don't even especially like people who have one long thumbnail for guitar. My mate Karl has one, and it scratched me the other day. I was sickened. ~ Russell Brand