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.

Antifa is now the one wearing the bandanas across their face or the masks. A lot of these groups - let's take Black Lives Matter, let's take Antifa, let's take the Ku Klux Klan - none of these groups today are centralized. They're all autonomous... It's the same thing with Antifa.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 am not so naive as to think everyone will change. There are certainly those who will go to their graves as hateful, violent racists.

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

The three Klan leaders here in Maryland, Roger Kelly, Robert White, and Chester Doles - I became friends with each one of them - when the three Klan leaders left the Klan and became friends of mine, that ended the Ku Klux Klan in the state of Maryland.

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

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

I knew as much about the Klan, if not more than many of the Klan people that I interviewed. When they see that you know about their organization, their belief system, they respect you.

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.

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

The Ku Klux Klan is as American as baseball, apple pie and Chevrolet.

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.

It's very important that we learn how to communicate... and learn to respect each other.

A Klan member is not stamped from a standard cookie cutter. They come from all walks of life and various education levels and environmental situations which have led to their decision to join the Klan. The one common denominator that all share is lack of exposure to others who may not look like them or believe as they do.

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.

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

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.'

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.

Always keep the lines of communication open with your adversaries.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Believe it or not, the best way to put somebody at ease or bring them to a level of trust is to know as much if not more about them than they know about themselves or the organization to which they belong.

I try to bring out the humanity in people.

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

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.

Over the past 30 years, I have come to know hundreds of white supremacists, from KKK members, neo-Nazis and white nationalists to those who call themselves alt-right. Some were good people with wrong beliefs, and others were bad people hellbent on violence and the destruction of those who were non-Aryan.

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

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.

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.

A lot of the media says, 'oh, black musician converts X-number of Klansmen.' I never converted one. But over 200 have left that, the white supremacy movements, because I have been the impetus for that.

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.

I've dealt with a lot of black supremacists as well as white supremacists, and supremacy of any kind is wrong, and I address both black and I address both white.

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

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