Let's All Scrub Out the 1980s

[tealin]

You know, we all have to do things which are difficult ... We get up in the night when our children don't go to sleep, three o'clock in the morning we may have to do something to help a neighbour, these are the ordinary things which keep life ticking over, and which make human civilised life possible. And the idea of the 36 people who are keeping the world going, really is often broadened to the idea that everybody has to try and do good things – secretly, often – just to keep things from deteriorating into a world where it's just dog-eat-dog, and everybody is just out for himself, or herself.

— Oliver Lehman, in Something Understood, about the Lamed-Vav Tzaddikim