“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.”

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-consciousness.

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

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.

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

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.

Whether you are doing it in the bar, the church, the strip joint, or the Himalayas, the first duty of music is to complement and enhance life.

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.

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

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

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.

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

The concept is to weave in some emotion.

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

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

The worst thing you can become in life is cynical. Cynical is like concrete. and nothing grows in concrete.

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’

I agree, the world would be a better place if doctors were less enthusiastic about adopting very new drugs.

I never have any problem getting enthusiastic with a good song and a good band.

The crew, like all Italian crews, was generous, warm, and enthusiastic.

Latins are tenderly enthusiastic. In Brazil they throw flowers at you. In Argentina they throw themselves.

The minute somebody joins a committee… they immediately suffer from committee brain. They become wildly over-enthusiastic, over-optimistic, over-pessimistic. Committees turn people into idiots, and politics is a committee.

I had a bunch of lean years where I had to do things, a lot of which I wasn’t wildly enthusiastic about.

I’m proud to have played characters who’ve inspired people to live out loud, and I’m lucky to have reached an audience that’s been incredibly enthusiastic and supportive.