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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

Music rearranges your molecular structure.

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.

We disqualify ourselves from communicating with God when we refuse to open our hearts to people

So what this is is us, our personalities refined down on to a stage performance. In other words, the way we play is the end product of the way we live - we live in the cities, you see.

Nature, through all her works, in great degree, Borrows a blessing from variety. Music itself her needful aid requires To rouse the soul, and wake our dying fires.

There's so many characters they [studios] are not letting me play. And I thought, "Why don't you just go produce it yourself?".

Nothing on earth is so well-suited to make the sad merry, the merry sad, to give courage to the despairing, to make the proud humble, to lessen envy and hate, as music.

I would never scream at my kids, never raise my voice. But as they often tell me, they were so well behaved that screaming was not necessary.

I have a tendency, just because I'm an ambitious person, to get impatient with things and want them to be moving faster then they are.

Fifty years ago, the spoken word reigned, but during the last fifty years, the power has gone over to pictures.

Those who play with the devil's toys will be brought by degrees to wield his sword.

The value of an item—in the mind of a consumer—is simply the difference between the anticipated price and the price on the tag.