Skilled Trades Quotes

An excellent plumber is infinitely more admirable than an incompetent philosopher. The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.

If I would be a young man again and had to decide how to make my living, I would not try to become a scientist or scholar or teacher. I would rather choose to be a plumber or a peddler in hope to find that modest degree of independence still available under present circumstances.

I supported myself by delivering the 'Wall Street Journal' and doing odd jobs. I love plumbing and carpentry.

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.

I say get an education. Become an electrician, a mechanic, a doctor, a lawyer, anything but a fighter. In this trade, it's the managers that make the money and last the longest.

Anybody who has doubts about the ingenuity or the resourcefulness of a plumber never got a bill from one.

Ninety percent of my best friends back home are plumbers, electricians, builders, or landscapers. Most of our dads worked in trades.

God, we don't have nearly enough skilled carpenters, electricians, plumbers for the work that needs to be done in taking every single building in Canada and making it carbon-zero, a net-neutral building, by improving insulation, modernizing furnaces, improving the geothermal possibilities, heat pumps.

I think a lot of blue collar people related to me because a lot of people work for their money.

I would never date a celebrity. I would want someone with real skills. Doctor, nurse, electrician... tailor.

We need women to go through apprentice programs. I've seen women who did, and who are now highly trained electricians and welders. These are jobs that women are capable of doing.

When you work with your hands, you learn to appreciate how easy it is to earn money talking.

The flaw in our character is our insistence on separating blue-collar jobs from white-collar jobs, and encouraging one form of education over another.

They went to university because someone, at a time when universities seemed important, said that in order to rise in the world, you had to have a degree. And thus the world was deprived of some excellent gardeners, bakers, antique dealers, sculptors, and writers.

There are far too many people in university in Britain. If you want to make money, be a plumber.

When I arrive in Los Angeles in the entertainment community, and I use implements like a shovel and a hammer, our society has distanced itself so far from working with its hands that those incredibly pedestrian skills are perceived as somehow being extraordinary.

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.

In a very general way, our society has fallen out of love with the skilled trades. Part of the problem is a myriad of myths and misperceptions that surround the jobs themselves, but the biggest cause is our stubborn belief that a four-year degree is the best path for the most people.

The people I represent in Northeast Ohio and the tens of millions of workers across our country are proud to be called blue collar.

Nowhere has specialization penetrated so deeply into the building professions as North America.

If man has good corn, or wood, or boards, or pigs to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles, or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad, hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods.

A four-year degree shouldn't be the only path to a good-paying job.

I was a lumberjack for years, a pub bouncer, I've sung in a band; in fact, I still sing, and I even trained myself to be a tree surgeon.

The school is the servant of the workshop and will one day be absorbed in it. Therefore there will be no teachers or pupils in the Bauhaus but masters, journeymen, and apprentices.

I have so much respect for people who do blue-collar work because I come from that background myself.