Quotes from Daryl Davis

A stupid person is someone who has the facts, who has the proper information, and still makes the wrong decision.

We would not have rock and roll without Chuck Berry, and when I first heard Chuck Berry, I fell in love with that music, and when I saw him, I changed my whole career trajectory that I was on as a kid.

I don't have any brothers and sisters, so I always relied on my parents to guide me or answer questions.

I have been attacked and mistreated for my skin colour since I was a child.

Invite your enemies to sit down and join you. One small thing you say might give them food for though, and you will learn.

1983 - Country music had made a resurgence in this country so I joined a country band. I was the only black guy in the band and consequently, usually the only black guy in many of the places where we played.

Keep in mind, when two enemies are talking, they're not fighting, they're talking. They might be yelling and screaming, but at least they're talking. It's when the talking ceases that the ground becomes fertile for violence.

There's a difference between being ignorant and being stupid... For me, an ignorant person is someone who makes the wrong decision or a bad choice because he or she does not have the proper facts. If you give that person the facts and the proper information you have alleviated that ignorance, and they make the right decision.

At the end, ignorance is the source of biases. If we cure that, there's nothing to fear and hate.

When you seek to destroy somebody, all you do is empower them, because they feel like, 'you see? They don't want us to have our rights to feel the way we want to feel.' And they get more and more emboldened and more and more empowered.

He spoke nine languages. You know some people can just pick up an instrument and play. My father was like that with languages.

Some black people who have not heard me interviewed or read my book jump to conclusions and prejudge me... I've been called Uncle Tom. I've been called an Oreo.

I came into music kind of late in life - until I was 17 I wanted to be a spy, wanted to be James Bond, so I had to learn rather quickly and practice longer than most people did to play catch up.

I have a former Baltimore City police officer's uniform and his robe and hood. He was the grand dragon, which means state leader. His day job, what paid his bills, he was a Baltimore City police officer, not an undercover officer in the Klan gathering intelligence, but a bona fide Klansmen on the Baltimore City police force.

Music is indeed the universal language and unites people.

People learn racism through dialogue. Somebody tells them about it. So if you can learn it through dialogue, you can also unlearn it through dialogue.

If you were to talk to somebody from Georgia you would understand what he's saying, he wouldn't sound like your next-door neighbor in Montana, but other than that it's the same language, just with a few little different nuances. That's just like country and blues, or blues and rock 'n' roll. They're the same music with different accents.

I was no stranger to racism. Having grown up a black person in the '60s and '70s, I knew that prejudice was common.

I don't believe that Donald Trump is a racist, per se. But some of the things that he does, some of the rhetoric that he uses, attracts racists and that sets the tone. And of course, you are judged by the company you keep.

My parents were U.S. Foreign Service, so I spent a lot of time you know, overseas in various countries around the world, you know, I was an American Embassy brat and today, as a professional musician, I travel all over this country and around the world.

Venues had segregated seating - but when Chuck Berry fused together blues, boogie-woogie and country music, it caused people not to be able to sit still. They bounced up out of their seats, knocking over ropes, dancing together.

Back in the day, prior to rock and roll, music halls, concert venues were segregated if they allowed black people in at all. You know, there were ropes that went around the sitting sections with signs hanging that would say, 'Sitting for white patrons only,' or 'Colored sitting only.'

If you have an adversary, you don't have to respect what they're saying, but respect their right to say it.

Everybody likes music. And rock 'n' roll - that was the music that brought white youth and black youth together for the first time in American music history.