Carlos Santana

One day there will be no borders no boundaries no flags and no countries and the only passport will be the heart.

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.

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

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!

When you fly to New York, sometimes they put you on hold and you just go round and around in a holding pattern. Sometimes in a concert, I feel other spirits in a holding pattern that they want to land through my heart and through my fingers.

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.

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

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.

Most people dont have that willingness to break bad habits. They have a lot of excuses and they talk like victims.

My job in this life is to give people spiritual ecstasy through music. In my concerts people cry, laugh, dance. If they climaxed spiritually, I did my job. I did it decently and honestly.

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.

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

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.

Ever since I was a child I've always been very attracted to melodies. Whether I hear Jeff Beck, a choir, an ocean or the wind, there's always a melody in there.

I'm ready to do something with Lady Gaga or Andrea Bocelli. I'm really grateful that nothing is out of the realm of possibility.

A lot of people said to me, 'Enough with the guest vocalists for a while. We want to hear the Mexican play the guitar!'

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

I'm laughing because I know the secret of life. And the secret of life is that I have validated my existence. I know that I am worth more than my house, my bank account, or any physical thing.

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.

Most people don't have that willingness to break bad habits. They have a lot of excuses and they talk like victims.

The guitar is your first wings. Its assigned and designed to unfold your vision and imagination.

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

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

There's a melody in everything. And once you find the melody, then you connect immediately with the heart. Because sometimes English or Spanish, Swahili or any language gets in the way. But nothing penetrates the heart faster than the melody.

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.

Just as Jesus created wine from water, we humans are capable of transmuting emotion into music.

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

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.

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

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

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

There is no person that love cannot heal; there is no soul that love cannot save.

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