No matter how accomplished you are, realize the extent to which you depend on others of lower status and earning capabilities for your survival, people whom you may not normally appreciate and may even look down upon. For example, most middle-class people regard sanitation workers as social inferiors. Yet without them we would all face life-threatening diseases and epidemics. Therefore, by what right do we feel superior to anyone who earns his living doing honest work, particularly labor that benefits the community?
— Joseph Telushkin in A Code of Jewish Ethics: Volume 1