Mike Rowe Quotes & Sayings

“I'm looking forward to the future, and feeling grateful for the past.”

“My mother's dad dropped out of the eighth grade to work. He had to. By the time he was 30, he was a master electrician, plumber, carpenter, mason, mechanic. That guy was, to me, a magician. Anything that was broken, he could fix. Anybody anywhere in our community knew that if there was a problem, Carl was there to fix it.”

“People like to cherry-pick the parts of their career that they're either in the midst of or that they're the most proud of, but the truth is careers and lives are tapestries.”

“I wouldn't wish any specific thing for any specific person - it's none of my business. But the idea that a four-year degree is the only path to worthwhile knowledge is insane. It's insane.”

“You've got a lot of very, very smart people standing by waiting for somebody else to do the work. Not a recipe for long-term solvency in my opinion.”

“Always flat front. You've got to be deeply suspicious of a man who consciously goes with pleats. Why would you do that?”

“We've waged war on work. We have collectively agreed, stupidly, that work is the enemy.”

“I come from a blue collar family, but my personal life isn't. I didn't get the gene that my grandfather had in spades. He was a local hero. Built the church that I went to. Built the house I grew up in. Steamfitter, pipefitter, electrician, mechanic and plumber. I wanted to do those things. But it just didn't come easy.”

“The one thing that TV is bad at doing is preaching. There are two extremes, you either turn the people into a punchline or turn them into hero, and both of those things suck, because most people are neither in real life.”

“I always complain because I'm old now and everything hurts.”