Carlos Santana quotes

Carlos Santana is a Mexican-American guitarist and songwriter, famous for pioneering a fusion of rock and Latin American music. His band, Santana, gained international acclaim with their soulful guitar sound and energetic performances. He continues to influence generations of musicians with his innovative style and passionate artistry. Here are 40 of his quotes:

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.

Carlos Santana

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

Carlos Santana

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

Carlos Santana

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.

Carlos Santana

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.

Carlos Santana

Oh, I think it was like when, you know, Cupid throws an arrow and hits you. First, there was this Mexican band, dressed up with bows and arrows. They were playing some funky weird music,, I didn't know it yet, but it was like Lee Perry, George Clinton, and Sun Ra mixed up, Mexican funky.

Carlos Santana

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

Carlos Santana

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

Carlos Santana

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.

Carlos Santana

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.

Carlos Santana

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

Carlos Santana

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

Carlos Santana

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.

Carlos Santana

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.

Carlos Santana

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.

Carlos Santana

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

Carlos Santana

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

Carlos Santana

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

Carlos Santana

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.

Carlos Santana

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

Carlos Santana

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.

Carlos Santana

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.

Carlos Santana