Russell Brand Quotes

1. I don't mind having a reputation as a serious and spiritual person. I think that would be a nice reputation to have.


2. What I've learnt - to my cost - on several occasions in my life, is that people will put up with all manner of bad behavior 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 f..ed. They'll wipe their hands of you without a second glance.

3. From quite early on, I had this idea of compartmentalized identities - "this is how you are when you are with your mum, and this is how you are when you are with your dad" - so it seemed like I could never absolutely be myself. And the image of myself as compromised and inconsistent made me want to withdraw from the world even further. I had a sense of formulating a paper-mache version of myself to send out in the world, while I sat controlling it remotely from some smug suburban barracks.

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




5. People don't realize that the future is just now, but later.

6. 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.

7. 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."

8. I couldn't possibly have sex with someone with such a slender grasp on grammar!





9. 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.

10. The price of privilege is poverty.

11. Even as a junkie I stayed true (to vegetarianism) - "I shall have heroin, but I shan't have a hamburger." What a sexy little paradox. 

12. 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.

13. 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.



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

15. Rebel children, I urge you, fight the turgid slick of conformity with which they seek to smother your glory.




16. (on religion) The lumbering monotheistic faiths have given us millennia of grief for a handful of prayers and some sparkly rituals.

17. Boggle with sex addicts is up there with go-kart racing with junkies.

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

19. 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."

20. As a performer, I'm very, very confident in what I do.

21. I've always been a "your parents have got to come up to the school" type of person. Even now, when I do something wrong - if I say something inappropriate on a live tv show, for example - I half expect to have to deliver a note to Barbara Brand: "Please come up to Channel 4 head office, Russell's done something despicable".

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

23. 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.

24. I've always had this impulse to be destructive. I have to say to myself: "remember, you've got all these things to do - don't ruin it just for the moment".

25. 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.

26. (on George W. Bush) It was nice of you to let him have a go, because, in England, he wouldn't be trusted with a pair of scissors.

27. Materialism and individualism do in moderation make sense. If you are naked and starving and someone gives you soup and a blanket your happiness will increase. That doesn't mean that if you have 10,000 silken blankets and a golden cauldron of soup made from white rhino cum your happiness will continue to proportionately increase until you're gouched out, swathed in silk, gurgling up pearlescent froth.

28. And while we're on the subject of ducks, which we plainly are, the story: "The Ugly Duckling" ought be banned as the central character wasn't a duckling or he wouldn't have grown up into a swan. He was a cygnet.

29. It's no wonder Bob Geldof knows so much about famine - he's been dining out on "I Don't Like Mondays" for 30 years.

30. To this day, I feel a fierce warmth for women that have the same disregard for the social conventions of sexual protocol as I do. I love it when I meet a woman and her sexuality is dancing across her face, so it's apparent that all we need to do is nod and find a cupboard.

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

32. What I think, whilst human beings are diverse and different, ultimately - Everyone knows what it is to be in love. Everyone knows what it is to find something funny. Everyone knows what it is to hate or to be jealous or feel insecure. We're made from the same basic stuff: 30 per cent of DNA the same as bananas, 60 per cent the same as worms and 98 per cent the same as chimpanzees, so we can't be that different from each other.

33. For me happiness occurs arbitrarily: a moment of eye contact on a bus, where all at once you fall in love; or a frozen second in a park where it's enough that there are trees in the world.







34. I'm above "heat" magazine, I've read a few books. But like, you know, if Robert...if there's two aftershaves on the shelf and one of them's got Robert Downey Jr.'s face on it, that might be an appealing aspect to me.

35. The most insightful thing I ever heard, was overheard. I was waiting for a rail replacement bus in Hackney Wick. These two old women weren't even talking to me - not because I'd offended them, I hadn't, I'd been angelic at that bus stop, except for the eavesdropping. Rail replacement buses take an eternity, because they think they're doing you a favor by covering for the absent train, you've no recourse. Eventually the bus appeared, on the distant horizon, and one of the women, with the relief and disbelief that often accompanies the arrival of public transport said: "Oh look, the bus is coming." The other woman - a wise woman, seemingly aware that her words and attitude were potent and poetic enough to form the final sentence in a stranger's book - paused, then said: "The bus was always coming".

36. (on "The Tempest" co-star Helen Mirren) Confidence. Potency. Female energy. Roaring oestrogen. She's got that potency, doesn't she? That's why she can play queens and leaders. Women are, of course, powerful, feral creatures - the Earth being so female. If women get in tune to that energy, it'll destroy us all.

37. 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. Billy Connolly said: "Don't vote, it encourages them," and, "The desire to be a politician should bar you for life from ever being one"…I don't vote because to me it seems like a tacit act of compliance; I know, I know my grandparents fought in two world wars (and one World Cup) so that I'd have the right to vote. Well, they were conned.

38. I'm into yoga, I meditate all the time, I'm vegetarian.

39. (on explaining his thought process during stand-up performances) My mind is aware, I am the puppeteer of myself. When it's good, there is nothing. I'm just completely engaged in the moment, completely lost within. I have the idea as if there are tendrils that hang from the heavens, and when my head is clear, I can cling to them and nothing happens - I don't have to think, it all just comes. I feel like a conduit so that I am free from my mind...When it's good, it's like I'm not there.

40. When I was growing up, I thought I'd be a lot happier if I was famous and successful and if I had money. And I think that's because we live in a culture that celebrates fame and commerce and consumerism and money, so that if you don't have those things, you feel like you're not enough. And I think we live in a culture that makes me: "Oh, I'm a little bit too fat or I'm too thin, or I'm not right and I don't fit in." And I think that increasingly I've realized is I've tried to change and I've tried to adapt and amend and pursue these ambitions that ultimately - everybody has beauty within themselves, and if you find this and accept this, then you will be happy regardless of external attributes or material things.

41. When I'm improvising I say anything that comes to mind - a lot of it disgusting.

42. Be led by your talent, not by your self-loathing; those other things you just have to manage.

43. I shook George Osborne's hand once, by accident, it was like sliding my hand into a dilated cow.

44. Change is perpetual and, to be honest, I don't see any great value in being a provocateur around trivial subjects. We're living at a time of incredible change and incredible consequence. And I think perhaps we should preserve our rhetoric for important subjects: the impending ecological doom being brought about by the irresponsibility of big business; the predatory nature of the financial industry; the constant subjugation of the world's poor; the outsourcing of manufacturing industries into the Third World; the growing disparity between the rich and the poor in apparently civilized nations like Britain and the US.

45. It's difficult to believe in yourself because the idea of self is an artificial construction. You are, in fact, part of the glorious oneness of the universe. Everything beautiful in the world is within you.

46. The interest in me and acceptance of my novelty has been like when Superman leaves his planet and suddenly things that are just normal for him become these superpowers here on earth. Or like Columbus returning from the colonies with tobacco.

47. I do have a regard for the musicality of language that came from BBC sitcoms like "Fawlty Towers."

48. Love is a spark of divinity. There is salvation in love because it is the thing that unites us all. Love is the spark of divinity that is, in essence, life; that is found everywhere. It don't matter that it's transient, it don't matter that it often breaks our hearts, all that matters is that we can all share it in the moment.

49. My dad's philosophy was (and I think still is) that life is a malevolent force, which seeks to destroy you, and you have to struggle with it. Only those who are hard enough will succeed. Most people get crushed, but if you fight, in the end life will go: "F…ing hell. This one's serious. Let him through".

50. Don't be lost. You are found also. We only have the moment. All that is real is the moment. Everything else is an illusion, so there we are.


51. As a person…I'm a little more doubtful, introspective and analytical.

52. There is always the possibility of change. No matter how difficult and how entrenched your situation may seem, be it your personal situation or the situation within society; personal revolution, social revolution are always a possibility... we could form a Utopia at any moment.

53. No-one really feels self-confident deep down because it's an artificial idea. Really, people aren't that worried about what you're doing or what you're saying, so you can drift around the world relatively anonymously: you must not feel persecuted and examined. Liberate yourself from that idea that people are watching you.

54. Honesty has always been an integral part of my operation, really.


55. Life is transient and the material world is but an illusion; only love is real.

56. Sometimes, as a comedian, a line will come to you, that is so beautiful, so perfect, that you think: I did not create this line. This line belongs to all of us. Surely this is a line of God.

57. I've learned that it is important to be beautiful to people. That all that matters is that you are lovely to the people around you and the people that you meet. It doesn't matter if you're a show off or a little bit vain, as long as you're good to your mum, and that you're kind, and that you're lovely. And that everything is transient and superficial and to not get attached to material things because you're going to lose it all. And the only thing that is constant is love.

58. We all need something to help us unwind at the end of the day. You might have a glass of wine, or a joint, or a big delicious blob of heroin to silence your silly brain box of its witterings but there has to be some form of punctuation, or life just seems utterly relentless.

59. (in 2012, to a yakking fan) You're the worst audience member since John Wilkes Booth.



60. Strength does not have to be belligerent and loud.

61. I'll not be changing, but America will.

62. (on why the title of his show changed from "Strangely Uplifting" to "Brand X") I have a friend who didn't name his twins for months - just called them Big One and Little One. I said: "Look, they're going out into the world now. You're going to have to give them names". The same was true for the show. When it was apparent it was real, we named it.

63. 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 f…, 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.

64. The main narrative thrust of The Bible though, like most spiritual texts, including the Quran is: be nice to each other because we're all the same.


65. 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.

66. Everyone has their own mantra.

67. I'd love to be him, I'd be like a Tom Baker one. Like a sort of long scarf, flouncy, wistful, quoting occasional poems, kicking Cybermen in the nuts. This is what the country needs. I would just travel through time pinching people's a***s. Carry on up the worm hole. Like quantum physics, so that is actually perfect. No, we can't have that in the Tardis, 'ere it's a lot bigger on the inside.

68. I don't know if this is the kind of retrospective analysis that people are fond of applying to their work or actions, but it feels like I knew I was going to be famous and I knew that an element of that would be traumatic, so that if I could make myself something big and otherworldly, it would be a kind of defense.

69. (on his personal best for having orgasms) Once in Dublin…nine…not even in a day, an evening. I felt exhausted the next day.


70. I also do a lot of Kundalini yoga.

71. I remember like when I first got here thinking: "Oh, my God, I'm allowed a gun. That's really cool", and I set about justifying it in innumerable ways. I went to a gun range and I learned a little bit about shooting and all that kind of stuff. And in my mind it's like I want to be able to protect the people I love…People who knew me said: "You should not get a gun- you don't have that kind of personality. You're not a person who should have deadly force at your disposal"…After the Sandy Hook tragedy I thought: "How can I legitimately hold the opinions that I do and then hypocritically purchase a firearm". So I have not bought one. My feeling is that the more guns that are available, the more likely for them being used incorrectly here.

72. 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.







73. The great Tupac Shakur, one of your fine poets in America said: "Role is something you play. Model is something you make. Both them things are fake." I will be an authentic father, teaching those kids how to steal letters.

74. It would have been convenient to be gay. Just because of the grooming, the narcissism, stuff like that. But I have this kind of roaring heterosexuality. Traditional, uncomplicated heterosexuality, an almost cliched Robin Askwith thing.

75. Communism is just sharing isn't it? We tell children to do it all the time.

76. In England, we have such good manners that if someone says something impolite, the police will get involved. Christian Bale, I believe whilst in a restaurant, rolled his eyes at the lighting. That is an offense punishable by five years in prison in the United Kingdom. I admire Christian Bale and I think he's one of the greatest living actors on the planet currently, but we cannot shirk when it comes to good manners. If it's true that he also dropped a napkin on his way to the lavatory, then I think that he should possibly receive the death penalty.

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

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

79. The status of a drug is irrelevant to a drug addict. If you're a drug addict, you're getting drugs. That's it. So in way, it's probably best to make it simple.





80. 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.

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

82. 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".


What do you think of Russell Brand's quotes?


Feel free to comment and share this blog post if you find it interesting!