Russell Brand Quotes & Sayings

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

Consciousness exists beyond your head, between our heads, and it can manifest harmony. — Russell Brand

Total revolution of consciousness and our entire social, political and economic system is what interests me, but that's not on the ballot. — 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

I suppose I'm qualified to some degree to speak about the nature of contemporary media, as that's where I currently work. People, I think have been beyond trained - coded to not anticipate change; to think that change is implausible. Almost weaned off. It had to be a revolution bred out of us. — Russell Brand

Now, I don't want to come over all cynical, but doesn't that imply that you could dispense with the entire democratic process and simply award power to the party with the most money in its campaign fund? Yes. It does. Maybe not always, just every, single time in history so far. — Russell Brand

By puberty I learned that nothing worth having could be easily attained and to succeed one must be single minded. — Russell Brand

What was so painful about Amy's death is that I know that there is something I could have done. I could have passed on to her the solution that was freely given to me. Don't pick up a drink or drug, one day at a time. It sounds so simple; it actually is simple but it isn't easy; it requires incredible support and fastidious structuring. — Russell Brand

Apathy is a rational reaction to a system that no longer represents, hears or addresses the vast majority of people. — Russell Brand

It seems to me that actual democracy is where all of us get to participate and it's not just a sort of a blunt little dry hump in a ballot box, but an actual penetrative process. — 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

The greatest poverty one can have is to be poor in one's heart and for falling in love, he is truly happy. He discovers purpose. — Russell Brand

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

Eventually, I think you find a spiritual and emotional connection with someone, and I think it unifies you with everyone else. I think if you love one person, it makes you love everyone ... — Russell Brand

The bad-boy label is just an assumption. — 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

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

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

How we treat the vulnerable is how we define ourselves as a species. — Russell Brand

You must not feel persecuted and examined. Liberate yourself from the idea that people are watching you. — 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

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

If you have no brothers and sisters it defines you for life; even when you're thirty you refer to yourself as an only child. — Russell Brand

All desires are the inappropriate substitute for the desire to be at one with God. — Russell Brand

Maybe a life of devotion doesn't need to be robes and chanting; maybe it's just going through life with open eyes and an open mind, looking out for chances to help people and buzz on the altruistic zip it gives, like coins in Mario Land. — Russell Brand

I like threesomes with two women, not because I'm a cynical sexual predator. Oh no! But because I'm a romantic. I'm looking for "The One." And I'll find her more quickly if I audition two at a time. — Russell Brand

I enjoyed having a reputation as being wild, but these days I try not to worry about what people think in the privacy of their own brain or what they write in the bizarre publicity of their own newspapers, because all of those things are meaningless. — Russell Brand

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

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

I sometimes cuddled her too hard so that she would yelp. "Here, have some of my painful love," my febrile embrace would tell her. "It is constrictive and controlling and painful, like all love should be." In later life, I have come to realize that any expression of love which ends in a yelp probably requires modification. — 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

This drink. This drink will fuck you from your gums to your guts, but cold enough, the sugar and fizz will provide a blip, just long enough, to stop you opening a vein. Coke. Or Pepsi - doesn't matter.
This phone. This phone will connect you to people everywhere, except for where you are, and sever you from God forever. Apple. — Russell Brand

Over the road there was a church: a modern gray building, which constantly played a recording of church bells. Strange it was. Why no proper bells? I never went in but I bet it was a robot church for androids, where the Bible was in binary and their Jesus had laser eyes and metal claws. — Russell Brand

The six heirs to the Walmart fortune have more wealth than the poorest 30 per cent of Americans. — Russell Brand

Life's never a postcard of life, is it? It never feels like how you'd want it to look. — Russell Brand

I'm a vegetarian. I believe that we're all equal. I ain't got no right to kill. Say a fly comes in my house, I tolerate that little a**hole. — Russell Brand

We continue to be spilled on by consumerism even though we know it doesn't make us happy. — Russell Brand

If you're a drug addict, then you've always got drugs, so you're a criminal. So you're gonna get into problems. — Russell Brand

I keep hearing in my head "you are the Messiah, you are the Messiah". I think there's something wrong with my headphones. — Russell Brand

What should happen is a little voice in your head, like Jimmy Cricket in Pinocchio, will go 'But Russell, that bird, that's a creature like you, if you kill it it'll be all sad' and you go 'F***, alright. I won't kill it then.' — 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

Like Jesus said, "The kingdom of heaven is within," which seems, once and for all, to bust wide open the daft afterlife view of heaven as some kind of Lando Calrissian cloud kingdom that you can get into like Alton Towers if you acquire enough good-boy tokens. — Russell Brand

I also quite like to be recognized by children; I find it sweet. — 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

Socialism isn't a dirty word; it just means sharing. Really, it's just the bureaucratic arm of Christianity. — 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

It is difficult to feel sympathy for these people. It is difficult to regard some bawdy drunk and see them as sick and powerless. It is difficult to suffer the selfishness of a drug addict who will lie to you and steal from you and forgive them and offer them help. Can there be any other disease that renders its victims so unappealing? Would Great Ormond Street be so attractive a cause if its beds were riddled with obnoxious little criminals that had brought it on themselves? — Russell Brand

Drag your past around if you like, an old dead decaying ox of what you think they might've thought, or what might've been if you'd done what you ought. That which needs to burn let it burn. If the idea doesn't serve you, let it go. If it separates you from the moment, from others, from yourself, let it go. — Russell Brand

I've never had a sustained period of medication for mental illness when I've not been on other drugs as well. It's just not something that I particularly feel I need. I know that I have dramatically changing moods, and I know sometimes I feel really depressed, but I think that's just life. I don't think of it as, "Ah, this is mental illness," more as, "Today, life makes me feel very sad." I know I also get unnaturally high levels of energy and quickness of thought, but I'm able to utilize that. — Russell Brand

Im happy to be a part of the conversation, if more young people are talking about fracking instead of twerking were heading in the right direction. The people that govern us dont want an active population who are politically engaged, they want passive consumers distracted by the spectacle of which I accept I am a part. — 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

Boggle with sex addicts is up there with go-kart racing with junkies. — Russell Brand

That's what keeps me alive, perversion and star quality. — Russell Brand

My mum brought me up on her own. All we really had was each other. — Russell Brand

Rituals are missing nowadays — Russell Brand

What I liked about it is in the world of children, there are very, very different rules and a kind of naivete and innocence and sweetness that's been beautifully captured, I think, by this film as you can even see [gesturing toward the film's poster on display nearby] from this gorgeous artwork. — Russell Brand

When I was an atheist it was because I rejected authority, and why not reject the supreme authority of God, particularly that boring fucker on Songs of Praise. I could reject him with the unsentimental dispatch of a clipped toenail. When I got clean from drugs and alcohol, I saw that the way I'd always seen the world was limited. It will always be limited. By yielding authority to a benign power, I found a key to transcend previous limitations. — Russell Brand

The revolution that's required isn't a revolution of radical ideas, but the implementation of ideas we already have. — Russell Brand

What I might do is watch Mrs Doubtfire. Or Dead Poets Society or Good Will Hunting and I might be nice to people, mindful today how fragile we all are, how delicate we are, even when fizzing with divine madness that seems like it will never expire. — Russell Brand

Amy Winehouse - her surname's beginning to sound like a description of her liver. — 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

In meditation I access it; in yoga I feel it; on drugs it hit me like a hammer - at sixteen, staring into a bathroom mirror on LSD, contrary to instruction ("Don't look in the mirror, Russ, it'll fuck your head up." Mental note: "Look in mirror."). I saw that my face wasn't my face at all but a face that I lived behind and was welded to by a billion nerves. I looked into my eyes and saw that there was something looking back at me that was not me, not what I'd taken to be me. The unrefined ocean beyond the shallow pool was cascading through the mirror back at me. Nature looking at nature. Not me, little ol' Russ, tossed about on turbulent seas; these distinctions were engineered. — Russell Brand

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

What was alien was being ordinary, being humdrum, being trapped into appeasing ... having to crush and stifle my opinions, not being allowed to be brilliant, tricking myself into mediocrity. — Russell Brand

There was [really] little difference between someone acting throwing french fries in your face and someone throwing french fries in your face. — Russell Brand

Once there the main man, the bearded preacher, bridles and jabs, spasms and gurns like a pre-ejaculatory James Brown. — Russell Brand

Imagine the wisdom to be passed down from the classical Buddhist texts. — Russell Brand

The need to find out what will happen if I don't relent or moderate my actions has been a constant source of difficulty and discomfort in my life. — Russell Brand

I couldn't possibly have sex with someone with such a slender grasp on grammar! — Russell Brand

Say I feel all sad and self-indulgent, then get stung by a wasp, my misery feels quite abstract and I long just to be in spiritual pain once more - 'damn you tiny assassin, clad in yellow and black, how I crave my former innocence where melancholy was my only trial'. — Russell Brand

Invisible violence in Pakistan, violence against brown people, ongoing violence in Iraq - that's got to be quantified in the same way as the cinematic glamorous violence that happens in recognisable cities. — Russell Brand

See all these buildings, Russell? All these buildings were once a drawing on a piece of paper, and before that they were an idea in someone's head. Any idea that you have, you can make manifest. — 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

This is no time for drinking a mug of water - which you would do nowhere else in the world. A mug of water! You just don't drink water from mugs, do ya? Except on the telly. Water out of a mug! Should be a hot drink ... mug of water. — Russell Brand

I used to believe in the system that I was born into: aspire, acquire, consume, get famous and glamorous, get high and mighty, get paid and laid. — Russell Brand

My belief is that we do not currently operate on a frequency of consciousness that is capable of interpreting the information required to understand the great mystery. I — Russell Brand

The Holy Spirit ain't got a pen. — Russell Brand

I know change is possible, I know there is an alternative, because I live a completely different life to the one I was born with. I also know that the solution is not fame or money or any transient adornment of the individual. The only Revolution that can really change the world is the one in your own consciousness, and mine has already begun. — 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 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

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

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

Honesty has always been an integral part of my operation, really. — Russell Brand

I say us - obviously I don't vote as I believe democracy is a pointless spectacle where we choose between two indistinguishable political parties, neither of whom represent the people but the interest of powerful business elites that run the world. — Russell Brand

I know that's the sort of thing people say and I really hate it when people say the sort of things people say. I always think, 'You don't mean that, you just think it sounds good. — Russell Brand

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

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

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

It seems to me that a lot of people are using religious arguments to advance their own prejudices. — Russell Brand

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

I thought I was promiscuous, but it turns out I was just thorough. — Russell Brand

No one shuts their laptop after looking at pornography and says, 'What a productive time I just spent connecting with the world!' — Russell Brand

Today's 'Sesame Street' will NOT be brought to you by the number 34 or the letter D. — 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

In England, we have such good manners that if someone says something impolite, the police will get involved. — Russell Brand

The best thing you can do is fall in love. My life has been changed by falling in love. — Russell Brand

WHEN I STILL USED, I WAS ONCE WORKING IN IBIZA, HEDONISM capital of the nineties and the turn of the millennium. People swayed in sweaty swathes and stayed, pilled-up for days. I couldn't participate, because I was too shy or broken, caught on some taut barbed wire in my mind. Me and my mate Matt, high one night, lost ourselves, found ourselves in a wood and pretended to be animals. It was just us, and we prowled and circled around. We locked eyes and growled and danced. "Let's pretend we're animals" was forgotten, and we were animals. We are animals. We are free animals with a divine spark, we're not in a farm or a zoo or a theme park, we're free. We've forgotten that we're free. — Russell Brand

You're a musician, it is important that you suffer! — 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