(There is something religious here, like responses in church; a reaffirmation of faith in the basic American dogma, that it is, always, a Good Morning.)

--Christopher Isherwood, 'A Single Man'

"Someone has to ask you a question," George continues, meaningly, "before you can answer it. But it's seldom you find anyone who'll ask the right questions. Most people aren't that much interested -"

Christopher Isherwood, 'A Single Man'

"We are all of us more or less echoes, repeating involuntarily the virtues, the defects, the movements, and the characters of those among whom we live".

--Joseph Joubert

Doubt thou the stars are fire

Doubt that the sun doth move

Doubt truth to be a liar

But never doubt I love

--William Shakespeare, 'Hamlet'

"'We had fine notions then, didn't we?' And then, with a rush, 'Oh Ashley, nothing has turned out as we expected!'

'It never does', he said. 'Life's under no obligation to give us what we expect. We take what we get and are thankful it's no worse than it is'.

--Margaret Mitchell, 'Gone with the Wind'

"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'

"Just think about what a real education for these children would involve. It would start by giving a child an understanding of himself, his world, his culture, his community. That's the starting point of any educational process. That's what makes a child hungry to learn - the promise of being part of something, of mastering his environment. But for the black child, everything's turned upside down. From day one, what's he learning about? Someone else's history. Someone else's culture. Not only that, this culture he's supposed to learn is the same culture that's systematically rejected him, denied his humanity".

--Barack Obama, 'Dreams from my Father'