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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Always keep the lines of communication open with your adversaries.

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.

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.'

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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