Carlos Santana Quotes

Everybody sooner or later has to drop the luggage and the baggage of illusions.

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

Most people are prisoners, thinking only about the future or living in the past. They are not in the present, and the present is where everything begins.

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

If you stay in your heart you will always be inspired and if you are inspired you will always be enthusiastic. There is nothing more contagious on this planet as enthusiasm.

He just seems as cool as ever. I can smell him. Even on the other side, there is smell. Like, when babies are born, there's two smells-one is chicken soup, which is the flesh, and the other is lilacs, which is coming from the spiritual garden. The spirit has a lilac smell.

If you want to be successful, just meditate, man. God will tell you what people need.

When my father passed away two or three years ago, I didnt listen to music for four days - thats a long time for me.

I invite you, wholeheartedly, to read books that remind you of your highest self and emancipate you from mental slavery or false beliefs and illusions. The more you invest in attracting books that resonate with the frequency of your true self, the more light you will bring to the world.

I have come to the conclusion - and I don't know why it took me so long, but nevertheless, I'm here now - that a lot of people tell me they don't get enough guitar on my albums. So I decided to do an album where the guitar would be the singer, playing the melody.

You're always cursing, you're always praying and you're always making love. It ain't do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do.

Your mind is a magnet. You don't attract what you need or what you want; you attract who you are. And I love who I am!

Live up to your convictions. You walk in grace or you walk in fear. You can't have it both ways.

The people of Arizona, the people of Atlanta, Georgia, you should be ashamed of yourselves.

You meditate and you got the candles, you got the incense and you've been chanting, and all of a sudden you hear this voice: 'Write this down'

Angels cry because they want to experience what you and I feel: the moment. They live in eternity. They dont know what it is like to read a newspaper and get ink on your fingers. They dont know what it is like to take your shoes off and wiggle your toes under the dinner table.

Every day you wake up is an opportunity to go beyond, and that 's why I let my band go right now. For the first time in my life I'm just roaming around, vagabonding.

Bring the brothers home, and sisters home now. Legalize marijuana and take all that money and invest it in teachers and in education. You will see a transformation in America.

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.

I don't eat meat because meat brings out negative qualities such as fear, anger, anxiety, aggressiveness, etc. Vegetables peacefully offer themselves to the earth when ripe, thus allowing a sublime and peaceful thought-conscio usness

All music is important if it comes from the heart.

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.

And as for what I've learned: be an instrument of peace. Be a gentleman at all costs. Enjoy yourself - have fun with your existence. Learn to listen to your inner voice and don't overdose on yourself. Keep your darkness in check. Let music be a healing force. Be a real musician: once you start counting money before notes, you're a full-time wannabe. Put your guitar down and go outside and take a long drink of light with your eyes. Go walk in the park and take off your shoes and socks and feel the grass under your feet and mud between your toes. Go see a baby smiling, go see a wino crawling, go see life. Feel life - all of it, as much as possible. Find a human melody, then write a song about it. Make it all come through your music.

We are capable of creating miracles ourselves and the greatest miracle is to create a masterpiece of joy out of your life with no excuses. The thing I focus on is going straight to heart. I go to mine first because if I don't feel it, you're not going to feel it. I take a deep breath and remind myself that before I give it to you I have to give it to myself.

Just as we have two eyes and two feet, duality is part of life.

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

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

My dad's a beautiful man, but like a lot of Mexican men, or men in general, a lot of men have a problem with the balance of masculinity and femininity - intuition and compassion and tenderness - and get overboard with the macho thing. It took him a while to become more, I would say, conscious, evolved.

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

When you play from the heart,
all of a sudden there's no gravity.
You don't feel the weight of the world,
of bills, of anything.
That's why people love it.
Your so-called insurmountable problems disappear,
and instead of problems you get possibilities.

John Coltrane is still probably one of the greatest musicians of this century. His tone truly puts demons on a leash. His gift is directly from the mind of God and is very powerful ... The first time I heard a Love Supreme, it was really an assault. It could've been from mars as far as i was concerned, or another galaxy.
I remember the album cover and the name, but the music didn't fit into the patterns of my brain at that point. It was like someone trying to tell a monkey about spirituality or computers, you know, it just didn't compute.

Everything is a battlefield. If you fight with anger, you are part of the problem. If you fight with joy, you're part of the solution.

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

If you carry joy in your heart, you can heal any moment.

You can take things that Jimi Hendrix took, from Curtis Mayfield or from Buddy Guy for example, because we are all children of everything, even Picasso. But if you want to stand out, you have to learn to crystallize your existence and create your own fingerprints.

The Devil is like a strainer that separates the mud from the gold.

When a baby comes you can smell two things: the smell of flesh, which smells like chicken soup, and the smell of lilies, the flower of another garden, the spiritual garden.

I have wisdom. I feel love. I live in the present and I try to present a dimension that brings harmony and healing.

Music rearranges your molecular structure.

People get stuck in their stories. My advice is to end your story and begin your life.

The best part of touring, still, is touching people's hearts and igniting my band and igniting the people into what you call a spiritual revelation is sound and emotion.

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

Surrender your whole being to a note, and gravity disappears ... wi th one chord

when you go through hell - your own darkest night of the soul - don't take pictures to show to your friends.

No one's better than me. I'm not better than anyone. Whether it's Eric Clapton or BB King we look straight at each other. And that keeps it real.

I know I'm not the kind of person who's gonna wind up a walking jukebox, like many rock 'n' roll artists. They just play their hits and that's it. That doesn't appeal to me.

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

It takes strength, man, to know when to let go of your kids, really, really let them go and trust them with the one who made them in the first place.

In 1983, after my son, Salvador, was born, I visited Cihuatlan, my dad's hometown in Mexico with my dad. I met a lady there who told me, "Carlos, I grew up with Don Jose'. (dad) We were from the same generation. I want you to know that you might be recognized around the world, but here Don Jose' is the Santana that counts." My dad just looked at me. I smiled and said, "Hey that's fine with me.

I would invite all Latin people to do nothing for about two weeks so you can see who really, really is running the economy I am here to give voice to the invisible.

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

KISS is Las Vegas entertainment. A musician doesn't need the mask.

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.