A list created by: Lee Sonogan

Old mate, Russel Brand is a comedian, spiritualist and a much more. Started getting into him when he created The Trews on YouTube. Then I read his book Revolution. He wrote the book after he was telling people not to vote in England.

• “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
• “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
• “How we treat the vulnerable is how we define ourselves as a species. ” ― Russell Brand
• “A small minority cannot control an uncooperative majority, so they must be distracted, divided, tyrannized, or anesthetized into compliance.” ― Russell Brand, Revolution
• “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, Revolution
• “The truth is: there is on this frequency, from our human perspective, a planet, some beings, some resources; would it not be sensible to employ systems that benefit the planet, the beings, and the resources?” ― Russell Brand, Revolution
• “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, Revolution
• “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, Revolution
• “The economy is just a metaphorical device, it’s not real – that’s why it’s got the word “con” in the middle of it.” ― Russell Brand, Revolution
• “When people are content they are difficult to manoeuvre. We are perennially discontent and offered placebos as remedies.” ― Russell Brand, Revolution
• “Beyond the limited realm of the senses, the shallow pool of the known, is a great untamable ocean, and we don’t have a fucking clue what goes on in there.” ― Russell Brand, Revolution
• “In the same way my cat can never accurately describe the internet, we can never accurately describe the unknowable consciousness of the universe.” ― 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, Revolution
• “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
• “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 favour 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.” ― 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 regret that I didn’t realize that actually they’ve got no power over you at school — it’s all just a trick to indoctrinate you into being a conditioned, tame, placid citizen. Rebel children, I urge you, fight the turgid slick of conformity with which they seek to smother your glory.” ― Russell Brand
• “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. 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.” ― 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, My Booky Wook
• “There is not heroic revolutionary figure in whom we can invest hope; except for ourselves as individuals together.” ― Russell Brand
• “The most potent tool in maintaining the status quo is our belief that change is impossible. “Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” Winston Churchill quoted this on being informed he’d been voted out of office in spite of Britain’s victory in the Second World War.”
  ― Russell Brand, Revolution
• “I think many of the boundaries that convention has placed upon us are arbitrary, so we can fiddle with them if we fancy. Gravity’s hard to dispute, and breathing, but a lot of things we instinctively obey are a lot of old tosh.” ― Russell Brand, My Booky Wook