{"author":"Russell Brand","author_id":"Russell+Brand","total_quotes":49,"quotes":[{"text":"We’re naked under our clothes; we both know what it’s like to need to fart and hold it in, or not be able to get a hard-on, or worry that a bloke across the room might be looking at your bird and you might have to fight him but he looks well hard.","author":"Russell Brand","tags":["consciousness","human","society"],"id":37,"author_id":"Russell+Brand"},{"text":"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.","author":"Russell Brand","tags":["biography","humour"],"id":8257,"author_id":"Russell+Brand"},{"text":"Every moment is a fresh new beginning, a wonderful inauguration of the great cosmic journey through the universe. We can do whatever we want. We can change reality at any moment.","author":"Russell Brand","tags":["revolution"],"id":13289,"author_id":"Russell+Brand"},{"text":"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 defence.","author":"Russell Brand","tags":["work","myself","people "],"id":15377,"author_id":"Russell+Brand"},{"text":"Boggle with sex addicts is up there with go-kart racing with junkies.","author":"Russell Brand","tags":["goal-setting","humor","inspirational","satire"],"id":16505,"author_id":"Russell+Brand"},{"text":"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.","author":"Russell Brand","tags":["alcoholism","drug-addiction","recovery"],"id":20267,"author_id":"Russell+Brand"},{"text":"Companies' motives to make profit means they neglect inherent social or moral values.","author":"Russell Brand","tags":["companies","morality","neglect-of-morals","profit","social-values","value"],"id":27972,"author_id":"Russell+Brand"},{"text":"The Oscar-nominated documentary The Act of Killing tells the story of the gangster leaders who carried out anti-communist purges in Indonesia in 1965 to usher in the regime of Suharto.The film’s hook, which makes it compelling and accessible, is that the filmmakers get Anwar —one of the death-squad leaders, who murdered around a thousand communists using a wire rope—and his acolytes to reenact the killings and events around them on film in a variety of genres of their choosing.In the film’s most memorable sequence, Anwar—who is old now and actually really likable, a bit like Nelson Mandela, all soft and wrinkly with nice, fuzzy gray hair—for the purposes of a scene plays the role of a victim in one of the murders that he in real life carried out.A little way into it, he gets a bit tearful and distressed and, when discussing it with the filmmaker on camera in the next scene, reveals that he found the scene upsetting. The offcamera director asks the poignant question, “What do you think your victims must’ve felt like?” and Anwar initially almost fails to see the connection. Eventually, when the bloody obvious correlation hits him, he thinks it unlikely that his victims were as upset as he was, because he was “really” upset. The director, pressing the film’s point home, says, “Yeah but it must’ve been worse for them, because we were just pretending; for them it was real.”Evidently at this point the reality of the cruelty he has inflicted hits Anwar, because when they return to the concrete garden where the executions had taken place years before, he, on camera, begins to violently gag.This makes incredible viewing, as this literally visceral ejection of his self and sickness at his previous actions is a vivid catharsis. He gagged at what he’d done.After watching the film, I thought—as did probably everyone who saw it—how can people carry out violent murders by the thousand without it ever occurring to them that it is causing suffering? Surely someone with piano wire round their neck, being asphyxiated, must give off some recognizable signs? Like going “ouch” or “stop” or having blood come out of their throats while twitching and spluttering into perpetual slumber?What it must be is that in order to carry out that kind of brutal murder, you have to disengage with the empathetic aspect of your nature and cultivate an idea of the victim as different, inferior, and subhuman. The only way to understand how such inhumane behavior could be unthinkingly conducted is to look for comparable examples from our own lives. Our attitude to homelessness is apposite here.It isn’t difficult to envisage a species like us, only slightly more evolved, being universally appalled by our acceptance of homelessness.“What? You had sufficient housing, it cost less money to house them, and you just ignored the problem?”They’d be as astonished by our indifference as we are by the disconnected cruelty of Anwar.","author":"Russell Brand","tags":["compassion","empathy","evil","homelessness","violence"],"id":35863,"author_id":"Russell+Brand"},{"text":"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.","author":"Russell Brand","tags":["behaviour","crazy","learning","life","work"],"id":40925,"author_id":"Russell+Brand"},{"text":"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.","author":"Russell Brand","tags":["capitalism","consumerism","love","socialism","spirituality"],"id":53815,"author_id":"Russell+Brand"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":49,"pages":5,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}