Top 35 Mike Rowe Quotes (2025 Update)

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

— Mike Rowe

Featured in: Grateful Quotes

2. “Not all knowledge comes from college.”

— Mike Rowe

Featured in: Common Sense Quotes

3. “Don’t follow your passion, but always bring it with you.”

— Mike Rowe

4. “Passion is too important to be without, but too fickle to be guided by. Which is why I’m more inclined to say, ‘Don’t Follow Your Passion, But Always Bring it With You.’”

— Mike Rowe

5. “Work hard AND smart.”

— Mike Rowe

6. “Anything worth doing hurts a little.”

— Mike Rowe

7. “The skills gap is a reflection of what we value. To close the gap, we need to change the way the country feels about work.”

— Mike Rowe

8. “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.”

— Mike Rowe

9. “Short-cuts lead to long delays.”

— Mike Rowe

10. “Some jobs pay better, some jobs smell better, and some jobs have no business being treated like careers. But work is never the enemy, regardless of the wage. Because somewhere between the job and the paycheck, there’s still a thing called opportunity, and that’s what people need to pursue.”

— Mike Rowe

11. “We are lending money we don’t have to kids who can’t pay it back to train them for jobs that no longer exist. That’s nuts.”

— Mike Rowe

12. “What you do, who you’re with, and how you feel about the world around you, is completely up to you.”

— Mike Rowe

13. “Happiness comes from knowing what you truly value, and behaving in a way that’s consistent with those beliefs.”

— Mike Rowe

14. “Opportunity usually shows up in overalls and looking like work.”

— Mike Rowe

15. “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.”

— Mike Rowe

16. “People with dirty jobs are happier than you think. As a group, they’re the happiest people I know.”

— Mike Rowe

17. “Innovation without imitation is a complete waste of time.”

— Mike Rowe

18. “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.”

— Mike Rowe

19. “I’m allergic to rocks hitting me in the face.”

— Mike Rowe

20. “The search for truth in cyberspace will take you through the wormhole, and there’s nothing on the other side but pedants and nitpickers and bottomless ambiguity. If you’re not careful, you’ll spend all your time proving everything and understanding nothing.”

— Mike Rowe

21. “Good jobs look a lot like kids playing and adults working.”

— Mike Rowe

22. “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.”

— Mike Rowe

23. “Why worry about doing something you love? Figure out what the opportunity is. Find a thing, get good at it, learn to love it later.”

— Mike Rowe

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

— Mike Rowe

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

— Mike Rowe

26. “There’s really not a difference between an octopus and, like, a giant pile of snot.”

— Mike Rowe

27. “Most of the things I do brand wise are both missionary and mercenary in their position, and that’s really important to me; that’s one of the first things I look at when I say, ‘does it make sense to do a deal?’”

— Mike Rowe

28. “Michael Brown and Eric Garner died because they got into a confrontation that could have been easily avoided. That’s what made their deaths so tragic.”

— Mike Rowe

29. “The thing that makes ‘Dirty Jobs’ different is that it’s one of the few shows that portrays work in a way that doesn’t highlight the drudgery. Instead, it highlights the humor.”

— Mike Rowe

30. “It’s about, when did it make sense to say one size fits everybody? It never ever ever made sense to do that, and yet we’re still selling education the same way we sold it when you and I were in high school.”

— Mike Rowe

31. “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.”

— Mike Rowe

32. “It’s funny; it’s a real balancing act. In TV, everybody’s talking about authenticity. In order to make ‘Dirty Jobs’ authentic, I really can’t be overly informed. The minute I am, I become a host It’s a very tricky business paying a tribute to work, because TV is very bad at it.”

— Mike Rowe

33. “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.”

— Mike Rowe

34. “Nobody makes a turd like that and lives.”

— Mike Rowe

35. “So you’re saying that after I take a disappointing shower I should get in bed and lay there and weep?”

— Mike Rowe

36. “Spend a few hours every week studying American history, human nature, and economic theory. Start with “Economics in One Lesson.” Then try Keynes. Then Hayek. Then Marx. Then Hegel. Develop a worldview that you can articulate as well as defend. Test your theory with people who disagree with you. Debate. Argue. Adjust your philosophy as necessary.”

— Mike Rowe

37. “My father has a tendency to start conversations in the middle of sentences. He’s also suspicious of anything modern – like nouns.”

— Mike Rowe

38. “The fact that we heated most of the old farmhouse with nothing but a woodstove was a source of great pride for my father and endless inspiration for witticisms like, “Chop your own wood it’ll warm you twice!”

— Mike Rowe