Quotes from Carlos Santana

The more choices we give patients affected by depression, the better we will serve them.

I have been accused of being a very simplistic, very lyrical player, and that's okay. That just comes from the blues, which is my background. But every day you wake up and transcend. You can't ever rest on your laurels.

There's never one sunrise the same or one sunset the same.

I realized that it's all really one, that John Lennon was correct. We utilize the music to bring down the walls of Berlin, to bring up the force of compassion and forgiveness and kindness between Palestines, Hebrews. Bring down the walls here in San Diego, Tijuana, Cuba.

Blues was my first love. It was the first thing where I said, 'Oh man, this is the stuff.' It just sounded so raw and honest, gut-bucket honest. From then I started rebelling.

Some musicians, man, you hear the note almost before they hit it. Jimi, Coltrane and Charlie Parker were like that.

Music rearranges your molecular structure.

First of all, the music that people call Latin or Spanish is really African. So Black people need to get the credit for that.

I think of music as a menu. I can't eat the same thing every day.

I realised a long time ago that instrumental music speaks a lot more clearly than English, Spanish, Yiddish, Swahili, any other language. Pure melody goes outside time.

People are flowers. Music is water. Musicians are the hose.

The music of Hendrix wakes people up to their possibilities. It's more than just dreaming about being a guitar hero.

Peace has never come from dropping bombs. Real peace comes from enlightenment and educating people to behave more in a divine manner.

There is more value in placing a flower in a rifle barrel than making war. As Jimi Hendrix used to say, musical notes have more importance than bullets.

You cannot behave appropriately, unless you perceive correctly. Once you perceive you are a beam of Light, that comes from the mind of God, you will carry yourself differently.

Happiness is not a destination or an experience. It's a decision.

The guitar is your first wings. It's assigned and designed to unfold your vision and imagination.

I grew up in the sixties watching B.B. King and Tito Puente and Miles Davis and Coltrane, everybody, Marvin Gaye, Jimi. And at the same time, with my left eye I was watching Dolores Huerta, Cesar Chavez, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Mother Teresa.

If our history can challenge the next wave of musicians to keep moving and changing, to keep spiritually hungry and horny, that's what it's all about.

I can show you that I have played with just about every jazz musician, every African musician, every blues musician. It's not like I'm cashing in on a false concept. This is what I do.

I knuckle down with my demons, and with my weaknesses.

The most valuable possession you can own is an open heart. The most powerful weapon you can be is an instrument of peace.

Some songs are just like tattoos for your brain... you hear them and they're affixed to you.

Your wrinkles either show that you're nasty, cranky, and senile, or that you're always smiling.