"Audacity of Hope" by Barack Obama

I am obligated to try to see the world through George Bush's
eyes, no matter how much I may disagree with him. That's what empathy does--it calls us all to task, the conservative and the liberal, thepowerful and the powerless, the oppressed and the oppressor. We are all shaken out of our compacency. We are all forced beyond our limited vision.

No one 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; like any value, empathy must be acted upon. When I was a community organizer back in the eighties, I would often challenge neighborhood 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 realize them, then we should ask ourselves whether we truly believe in them at all.