Work ethic is important because, unlike intelligence, athleticism, charisma, or any other natural attribute, it's a choice.
I'm looking forward to the future, and feeling grateful for the past.
I can say the willingness to get dirty has always defined us as an nation, and it's a hallmark of hard work and a hallmark of fun, and dirt is not the enemy.
Boredom is a choice. Like tardiness. Or interrupting.
Happiness does not come from a job. It comes from knowing what you truly value and behaving in a way that's consistent with those beliefs.
Dirt used to be a badge of honor. Dirt used to look like work. But we've scrubbed the dirt off the face of work, and consequently we've created this suspicion of anything that's too dirty.
We've waged war on work. We have collectively agreed, stupidly, that work is the enemy.
We need to promote an ethic of work. And there's no way one guy or one company is going to be able to do it. It has to be a big hot mess - public, private, government, NGOs and smart alecks on the TV talking about it.
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.
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.
We need to tell better stories of men and women who master a trade. We have to stop telling kids to blindly follow their passion and show them the opportunities that exist. That was the big, overarching message of 'Dirty Jobs.'
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.
There is a lot of stuff we can't control, but it is completely in our power to decide what the definition of what a good job is. That's up to us.
Stop looking for the 'right' career, and start looking for a job. Any job. Forget about what you like. Focus on what's available. Get yourself hired. Show up early. Stay late. Volunteer for the scut work. Become indispensable. You can always quit later, and be no worse off than you are today.
What you do, who you're with, and how you feel about the world around you is completely up to you.
The skills gap is a reflection of what we value.
Good jobs look a lot like kids playing and adults working.
There's a belief... in the country that we can cure unemployment by creating opportunity. The skills gap proves that opportunity along is not enough to get people employed.
To me, we're living in a non-linear world... But the truth is we are linear creatures. Everything unfolds one after the next. And that's the thing we've become disconnected from.
'Dirty Jobs' is maybe the simplest show in the history of TV, with the possible exception of 'The Gong Show'. I go around the country; we've shot in every state. And we spend a day with people who do jobs that are dirty or dangerous or ridiculous or difficult.
