"That's what empathy does- it calls us all to task, the conservative and the liberal, the powerful and the powerless, the oppressed and the oppressor. We are all shaken out of our complacency. We are forced beyond our limited vision.
Noone is exempt from the call to find common ground.
Of course, in the end a sense of mutual understanding isn't enough. After all, talk is cheap; empathy must be acted upon. When I was a community organiser back in the eighties, I would often challenge neighbourhood leaders by asking them where they put their time, energy and money. Those are the true tests of what we value, I'd tell them, regardless of what we like to tell ourselves. If we aren't willing to pay a price for our values, if we aren't willing to make some sacrifices in order to realise them, then we should ask ourselves whether we truly believe in them at all".

--Barack Obama, 'The Audacity of Hope'