Daryl Davis Quotes

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Daryl Davis

Profession : Musician

Birth : March 26, 1958

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.

Daryl Davis

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

Daryl Davis

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.

Daryl Davis

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.

Daryl Davis

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

Daryl Davis

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.

Daryl Davis

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.

Daryl Davis

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.

Daryl Davis

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

Daryl Davis

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.

Daryl Davis

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.

Daryl Davis

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?

Daryl Davis

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.

Daryl Davis

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.

Daryl Davis

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

Daryl Davis

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.

Daryl Davis

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.

Daryl Davis

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.

Daryl Davis

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

Daryl Davis

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.

Daryl Davis