A Quote by Daryl Davis

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.

Daryl Davis

Quote Topics

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Quote Author

Daryl Davis
American - Musician
Born: March 26, 1958

There's a black lawyer in Galveston, Texas, who was the unpaid NAACP general counsel in Texas. He had a great record in housing discrimination, labor discrimination. He decided to take as a client a member of the Ku Klux Klan because the state wanted to get the membership lists of the Klan to find out if they could get something on the Klan. And he said, `I got to take you. I despise you. But we, the NAACP, won that case; NAACP vs. Alabama in the 1950s. Nobody has the right to get your membership lists.' He was fired from the NAACP. To me, he's a hero.

Nat Hentoff

Well, I had nightmares when I was doing the Klan story all the time. I had a recurring nightmare of basically being exposed as a Jew inside the Klan compound.

Jon Ronson

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.

Daryl Davis

A lot of what is wrong with corporate America has to do with a culture filled with antibodies trained to expel anything different. HR departments often want cookie cutter employees, which inevitably results in cookie cutter solutions.

Nolan Bushnell

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?

Daryl Davis

What David Duke was preaching to me in 1978 about the Klan and what the Klan wanted to do regarding immigration is the same rhetoric, the same position that Donald J. Trump advocates and ran on and is trying to implement.

Ron Stallworth

If you take a look at education, the kids that get good grades are said to humiliate those who don't. And what, then, do we do? Slow them down. We put obstacles in their way. We do not devise public education systems that are designed to deal with their superior learning ability. We retard it so that they don't learn any more, any faster than the lowest common denominator - and that really is the nub of it. The Democrats' equality and sameness is all going to be defined by the lowest common denominator.

Rush Limbaugh

I remember one summer I played, like, with the granddaughter of this known Klan member. Like, all summer we caught cicadas. And we had grown close, and so it was, like, time for her birthday party and I said 'Oh, like, what time do I come for your party?' And she's like 'Oh, no, you can't come to my house 'cause my parents don't like black people.'

Dee Rees

I hate to say it but I hate black humor. I feel like a Klan member saying it, but it's just not funny.

Issa Rae

We're in a very individual sport, but they like us not to be so individual. They'd rather have you look like every other cookie cutter guy and have you believe that you're replaceable when you're really not.

Roy Nelson

Although we may come from vastly different stories and very different walks of life, we are one people who possess common values and common ideals; who celebrate individual excellence but also share a recognition that together, we can accomplish great and wonderful things we can't accomplish alone.

Barack Obama

There is no history of Donald Trump associating with the Ku Klux Klan. None whatsoever. But beyond that, people are saying that Trump is insensitive and he's boorish and he's a pig, and now he's sympathetic to all of these extreme right-wing groups 'cause that's who elected him. Okay, how many members of the Klan are there? The number is 200,000 tops. Tops! How many white supremacists are there? Where do they live? How do you campaign for them? Where do you get their votes? Where are they registered and how do you reach them in a campaign?

Rush Limbaugh

Do not turn into just cookie-cutter producer, cookie-cutter this, but a producer that people say wow, when they do something it's great or just unique or whatever.