In Chapter 28 of his autobiography (I. Asimov: A Memoir) Isaac Asimov reminisces about his friend and fellow science-fiction author Lester del Rey:

Lester is one of those people whom good luck has thrown my way. He is completely honest, a man of his word, and absolutely trustworthy. After all, one meets so many sleazeballs, so many people who lie and twist and whose word cannot be trusted, that one sometimes gets the sick feeling that life is a garbage pit in which people are the rotting banana peels. Yet one honest man refreshes the air fouled by a thousand devious rascals. For that reason I value Lester and the other honest men I have met in and out of science fiction.

There is a story in Jewish moralistic literature that God refrains from destroying this wicked, sinful world only for the sake of the few just men who can be found in it in every generation. Were I religious, I would believe this devoutly, and I can never be sufficiently grateful that so many just men have come my way, and that I have so rarely fallen into the hands of the wicked.

(cf. Isaac Asimov (28 Nov 2007), ...) - ^z - 20080110

(correlates: AsimovOnLibraries, AsimovOnPrecocity, ExempliGratia, ...)