Quotes from Daryl Davis

There's no more denying it, or saying we live in a post-racist society. All you have to do is turn on the TV and see all these hate crimes.

I've been playing music professionally, full time since 1980 when I graduated college at the age of 22.

Chuck Berry had a very profound impact on me. The man was a genius.

In most of my encounters with Klan members, we would discuss reasons for why they were members in the first place.

I had to keep myself in check. Like, 'Whoa, whoa, whoa.' I'd never sat in a room, five feet away from a Klansman putting on his damn robe. That's what freaked me out a little bit. But I wanted to see a Klansman.

When was 'again?' Was it back when I was drinking from a separate water fountain? Was it when I couldn't eat in that restaurant over there?... 'Make America Great Again' - before I had equality?

The most important thing I learned is that when you are actively learning about someone else you are passively teaching them about yourself.

Music absolutely played a massive role in bridging many gaps in the racial divides I would encounter.

Knowledge, information, wit, and the way you disseminate these attributes can often prove to be a more disarming weapon against an enemy or some with whom your ideology is in conflict, than violence or lethal weapons.

It doesn't sound rational for a Klansman to sit down to dinner with a black man. What you're overlooking is, to be racist is to be irrational. So, they are already irrational, and irrational people do irrational things. That's why a Klansman will sit down with me.

There has always been a great deal of racism in the U.S. before and after Obama.

There have been some incidents in which I was threatened and a couple of instances where I had to physically fight. Fortunately, I won in both instances.

I'd had a racist experience as a child at age 10, where people had thrown rocks at me and bottles. I didn't understand. And all it was, was because of the color of my skin, nothing I had done, nothing I had said.

If you don't keep hatred in check it will breed destruction.

Music teaches us how to work together, how to harmonize.

If you have an adversary, an opponent with an opposing point of view, give that person a platform, regardless of how extreme it may be.

I try to bring out the humanity in people.

If you spend five minutes with your worst enemy - it doesn't have to be about race, it could be about anything... you will find that you both have something in common. As you build upon those commonalities, you're forming a relationship and as you build about that relationship, you're forming a friendship.

We spend too much time talking about each other, at each other, past each other, and not enough time talking with each other.

The most powerful tools you can have are information and knowledge.

Racism is a cancer. You cannot ignore it and it'll go away. If you ignore cancer, it simply metastasizes and consumes the whole body.

We've simply been putting Band-Aids on the wounds of racism. We haven't drilled down to the bone to get to its source.

Music is my profession but learning more about racism on all sides of the tracks was my obsession.

It was incomprehensible to me that someone who had never seen me before, someone who knew absolutely nothing about me, would want to inflict pain upon me for no other reason than the color of my skin.