Top 60 Daryl Davis Quotes

You’re not going to beat the meanness out of a mean dog. You start beating a mean dog, it’s gonna become more mean. You start beating racists, they’re gonna become more racist.

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

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.

They’ve changed the name from white supremacy to white separatists, to white nationalists, to alt-right. It’s the same thing. A rose by any other name is still a rose.

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

You can legislate behavior but you cannot legislate belief. Patience is what it takes. But patience doesn’t mean sitting around on your butt waiting for something to happen.

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

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

You cannot hate the hate out of a person. You cannot beat the hate out of a person. But you can love it out of a person.

When you make friends with me, you have a friend for life.

When something bothers me, I try to learn about it.

I did not vote for Donald Trump and I do not support him but I believe that Trump is the best thing to happen to this country in a long time. He’s bringing out the country’s ugliness. There’s no turning a blind eye anymore.

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.’

You don’t change the system without changing the people behind the system.

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

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

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

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.

I have just about every book written on the Klan and I’ve read them all.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 don’t consider myself to be a racist, but to me there’s not much difference between a black racist or a white racist.

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.

Our society can only become one of two things, it can be become what we let it become or it can become what we make it, and I choose the latter.

There are many controversial topics out there – abortion, nuclear weapons, the 2nd Amendment, guns, whatever, the war in Iraq. You’re going to be on one side, somebody’s going to be on the other side. Invite those people to the table. Sit down and talk.

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

I met a white man once, who claimed that every black man has a gene which makes him violent. To which, I said I had never been violent and that he was wrong.

Every racist that I know – and I know a lot of racists – every racist that I know voted for Donald Trump.

My father was the first black Secret Service agent. He wanted to get into the FBI but J. Edgar Hoover, who was the head of the FBI, was a racist and he said we don’t want any black people.

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.

Always keep the lines of communication open with your adversaries.

I decided to go around the country and sit down with Klan leaders and Klan members to find out: How can you hate me when you don’t even know me?

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

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.

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.

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.

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

What we do too much of is, we talk about each other, we talk at each other, or we talk past each other. I have found that talking with each other is much more effective.

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

I respect someone’s right to air their views whether they are wrong or right.

I try to bring out the humanity in people.

I wanted to visit India because I have always wanted to explore the country. More than that, I have always found the caste system in India identical to the racism in the United States.

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.

There are a lot of well meaning white liberals. And a lot of well meaning black liberals. But you know what? When all they do is sit around and preach to the choir it does absolutely no good. If you’re not a racist it doesn’t do any good for me to meet with you and sit around and talk about how bad racism is.

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

I never set out to convert anyone in the Klan. I just set out to get an answer to my question: ‘How can you hate me when you don’t even know me.’

I didn’t vote for Trump, but I do believe his coming to power has done its own bit of good. People are coming out to protest against issues they so far didn’t talk about – sexual abuse, gun control, racism – because a bunch of crazies are out propagating them.

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

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.

In my band, I’m the band leader. As a band leader, our job is to bring harmony to the voices we have on stage.

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.

Am I going to vote for Trump? Absolutely not. I do not believe in his platform.

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.

When I experienced racism here in my own country, I was not prepared for it. I had never heard the word racism.

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

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