Blue Collar Quotes

Montreal is a great town. There's equal parts blue-collar town. ~ Jay Baruchel

The base has chosen or is choosing a candidate that the establishment says is absolutely unacceptable. And what that means is this marriage of an elite, big business-backed establishment and a blue-collar, downwardly mobile base has really come to a divorce. ~ Mara Liasson

The NBA is a big family, and I think of all these rookies as my brothers. I still believe I am blue collar among the All-Stars. ~ Yao Ming

We are always in these days endeavoring to separate intellect and manual labor; we want one man to be always thinking, and another to be always working, and we call one a gentleman, and the other an operative; whereas the workman ought often to be thinking, and the thinker often to be working, and both should be gentlemen in the best sense. ~ John Ruskin

I did a bunch of blue-collar jobs, because I knew I'd wind up with a white-collar job at some point, and I wanted to, I don't know, I just wanted to taste life. I dug graves for a while, I worked as a stock boy in a big department store, I worked in a bank. ~ Graydon Carter

My father's family came from Virginia and Philadelphia. He wasn't a brother who talked a lot. He was a workingman, a quiet, blue-collar dude. ~ Ice-T

I come from a blue-collar town - and being from that place, you learn not to let anybody take advantage of you. You don't let people mistreat you. You stand up for what's right. ~ Mo'Nique

Dan gave chase with his big, blue-collar hands grasping at my shirttail. ~ Bobby Adair

Like every other house-renting, paycheck-to-paycheck, heel dragging working American, it wouldn't matter if I stepped in it by accident or was pushed, or simply whiffed it as I walked by. With the powers in play, guilt or innocence had nothing to do with anything. ~ James Anderson

When you strip the bark off of Donald Trump, I think he's a very practical person. I think he's a very smart person. He's got an analytical mind. I think he's tapped into something. His son said he's the "blue collar billionaire." ~ Anthony Scaramucci

I'm a novelist - not an expert on coal mining. I'm not a politician with an agenda to push. I'm not a reporter presenting facts, and I'm not a sociologist documenting the last struggling remnants of blue-collar America. I'm simply an author who sets her books in coal country because it's where I come from, and it's what I know. ~ Tawni O'Dell

If you watch the 'Blue Collar Tour,' I was probably the least redneck of everybody. ~ Bill Engvall

I did grow up poor. My mom managed to get a job as a custodian at our church, and it was really just a favor for her, and my dad's an electrician - just a blue-collar family, and the house was usually falling apart. ~ Crystal Bowersox

For the blue-collar worker, the driving force behind change was factory automation using programmable machine tools. For the office worker, it's office automation using computer technology: enterprise-resource-planning systems, groupware, intranets, extranets, expert systems, the Web, and e-commerce. ~ Tom Peters

The only honourable work my parents knew was blue-collar. But while my father Robert ran a pawnbroker's shop, and my mother was a waitress, I moved into a middle-class world with a level of security they never knew. ~ Norman Foster

The workplace revolution that transformed the lives of blue-collar workers in the 1970s and 1980s is finally reaching the offices and cubicles of the white-collar workers. ~ Tom Peters

Now Mitt is not a perfect candidate. He has a number of problems. It's hard for him, for blue collar families like mine to identify with him. It's hard for economic conservatives to identify with him. He needs to do more to reach out to Latinos ... ~ George Pataki

Getting a group of rowdy, blue-collar workers together in one room and putting in a tape that shows a guy in a leisure suit putting his hand on his secretary's ass and you've got complete and total anarchy, ladies and gentleman. ~ Tara Sivec

I have a responsibility to the worker, both blue-collar and white-collar. I have an equal responsibility to the community. It would have been unconscionable to put 3,000 people on the streets and deliver a deathblow to the cities of Lawrence and Methuen. Maybe on paper our company is worthless to Wall Street, but I can tell you it's worth more. ~ Aaron Feuerstein

I don't know what to think of the money. It's kind of mind-boggling. I come from a middle-class, blue-collar family. We've never really had money. ~ Pat Burrell

I'd never put all my chips anywhere, because I don't want to close any doors, but I was raised in a very blue-collar family. I was raised by parents who said, 'If you don't go to work every day, you're not contributing', so that's my mentality. I have to work every day; I have to bring home a paycheck. ~ Katee Sackhoff

I was the adoring son of a Welsh-Irish father, a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, a Catholic Knight of Columbus who was a blue-collar, trade union organizer and, not surprisingly, a fervid Nixon-hater. ~ Bob Gunton

I'm a working-class kid from a blue-collar New England family. ~ R.A. Salvatore

We didn't do anything fancy. We just played blue-collar baseball. ~ Lou Piniella

In some circles Stalin has in fact been making a comeback. His portrait hangs above the dashboard of trucks, a symbol of blue- collar nostalgia for a tough leader. ~ Serge Schmemann

We wanted a labour force, but human beings came. ~ Terry Hayes

A picture of me as this super affable sales guy gets painted, but in actuality, I'm pretty driven by hard work and love working with teams. What people discount is, I grew up in a very small blue-collar town in Massachusetts and have basically scrapped my way career wise. ~ Tim Armstrong

You may look around, and see two groups here. White collar, blue collar. But I don't see it that way. You know why not? Because I am collar-blind. ~ Steve Carell

What first comes across our minds
About the stocky Mexican

Pushing a mower across the lawn
At 7 a.m. on a Saturday

As the roar of the cutter wakes us?
Let me take a guess.

Why do they have to come so damn early?
What do we make of his flannel

Shirt missing buttons at the cuffs,
Threadbare at the shoulders,

The grass stains around his knees,
The dirt like roadmaps to nowhere,

Between the wrinkles of his neck?
Let me take a shot. Dirty Mexican.

Would his appearance lead us to believe
He is a border jumper or wetback

Who hits the bar top with an empty shot glass
For the twelfth time then goes home

To kick his wife around like fallen grapefruit
Lying on the ground?

First, the stocky Mexican isn't mowing the lawn
At 7 a.m. on a Saturday.

He doesn't work weekends anymore ever since
He lost one-third of his route

To laborers willing to work for next to nothing.
Second, he knows better than to kneel

On the wet grass because, well, the knees
Of his pants will become grass-stained

And pants don't grow on trees, even here,
Close to Palm Springs.

Instead, after 25 years of the same blue collar work,
Two sons out and one going to college,

Rather than jail, and a small but modest savings
In case he loses the remaining two-thirds
John Olivares Espinoza

Blue-collar workers" have jobs requiring just as much brainpower as "white-collar professionals." To run a family farm is to be a business owner in a complicated industry. But, unlike many jobs requiring smarts and creativity, working a farm summons the body's intelligence, too. ~ Sarah Smarsh

I also have always liked the monster within idea. I like the zombies being us. Zombies are the blue-collar monsters. ~ George A. Romero

America needs football. It's a real blue-collar sport; it's played with a blue-collar mentality, a mentality that's the backbone of this country. ~ Troy Polamalu

When Jesus asked His followers to remember Him in the meal, what if Jesus wasn't referring to the steps taken in a ritual? What if Jesus was saying instead to organize your gatherings just like this one? Make sure you invite tax collectors, traitors, zealots, rough blue-collar workers, and loudmouths. And seat them all at the same table, indicating to them and everyone else that they are welcomed and cherished by God. ~ Josh Ross

The travels before and after the tour are what add up to what you're doing. You are really called into service - and it's the service industry man, it's blue collar man, I'm sweating by the second song. It's construction work from that second song on. ~ David Lee Roth

His mind filled with visions of a decadent kleptocracy in rapid decline, abetted by both political parties. America's masses, fed on processed poison bought with a food stamp swipe card. Low-skill workers, structurally unable to ever contribute again and too dumb to know their old jobs weren't coming back. The banks in Gotham leaching the last drops of wealth out of the country. Corporations unrestrained by any notion of national interest. The system of property law in shambles. The world drowning in debt. ~ George Packer

I was raised in a very blue-collar family. ~ Jamie Moyer

I've always been a blue collar guy, and I think it shows in my body of work and the way my career has developed. ~ Riley Smith

My personality is that I'm a human being like everybody else, just a citizen and a blue collar guy. ~ Lee Greenwood

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

I come from a blue-collar family, and I'm just glad for the work. ~ Wes Craven

They'll get it all from you sooner or later 'cause they own this f**kin' place. It's a big club and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the big club. By the way, it's the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head with their media telling you what to believe, what to think and what to buy. The table is tilted, folks. The game is rigged and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. Good, honest, hard-working people: white collar, blue collar, it doesn't matter what color shirt you have on. ~ George Carlin

I say that in jest a little bit, but Donald Trump is a blue collar guy with a balance sheet. That's the way he likes to have fun. ~ Donald Trump, Jr.

But it's much more exciting to make Die Hard. One of the reasons that I think that movie is so successful is it deals with those very important blue-collar relationship themes. But it's more visually beautiful to show things blowing up. It just gives you more on the screen. ~ Penn Jillette

It's an experience I'd like to add to the chorus, that these blue-collar, macho men, like my older brother, had the capacity to say: 'I don't care, I love you anyway.' There are young kids thinking: 'I'll never come out because it's too hard in our communities.' But I'm saying maybe your story can be similar to mine. ~ Colman Domingo

If the workers of the world want to win, all they have to do is recognize their own solidarity. They have nothing to do but fold their arms and the world will stop. The workers are more powerful with their hands in the pockets than all the property of capitalists. . . ~ Howard Zinn

I go home at the end of the day and I rarely talk about what I did that day. So my wife's experience is just like that of anybody else whose husband goes away to a blue collar job and comes home bruised and dirty and often proud of the work that they're doing. ~ Adam Savage

It was a source of shame for my family that I was in rock and roll, which is so blue-collar. It just isn't done. And I felt it, too. ~ Liz Phair

Kidney disease is a low-profile, unglamorous problem, a disease that disproportionately strikes minorities and the poor. Its celebrity spokesman is blue-collar comedian George Lopez, who received a kidney from his wife. ~ Virginia Postrel

I'll always have this blue-collar connection. For every guy, there is an opportunity to be a lot better than he thought he could be. We can't all be the star of the team, but we can be a star in our life. ~ Sylvester Stallone

English does not distinguish between arrogant-up (irreverence toward the temporarily powerful) and arrogant-down (directed at the small guy). ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Though there were many auspicious signs that preceded and accompanied Jesus's birth that might have prepared us for something kingly and special, the birth of Jesus was of the humblest peasant parentage in an unimportant town and in the lowest conceivable of buildings, a stable. After his birth he moved from there to a despised portion of the country, Galilee, to an unsavory town, Nazareth. As he grew up, he took a blue-collar job as a carpenter. He achieved a measure of notice as an adult when he was a rabbi with several men and women following him, but even then he went out of his way to reject marks of status by touching lepers, washing the feet of his followers, befriending little children, letting women become prominent in his entourage, and finally being crucified under the most humiliating circumstances.
Everything about Jesus spoke of servitude. ~ Eugene H. Peterson

Many blue-collar families struggling to pay rent would be happy to skip paying optional union dues. ~ Kevin O'Leary

Conservatives like to talk about 'the strivers' who share what they like to think of as Conservative values. But as I found in my Blue Collar Tories research in 2012, such people no longer see the party as their natural ally. ~ Michael Ashcroft

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. ~ Mike Rowe

My father worked in the Post Office. A lot of double shifts. All his friends were in the same situation - truck drivers, taxi cab drivers, grocery clerks. Blue collar guys punching the clock and working long, hard hours. The thought that sustained them was the one at the center of the American dream. ~ Gary David Goldberg

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

Dan was shorter than me, especially as I was wearing sky blue silk stilettos. He appeared to be my age or a few years older,stocky, and thick necked with swirling tattoos just visible beneath the blue collar of his uniform.Dan gave me a plain once over as he walked me to an elevator and placed his palm against a glass screen. The screen retracted to reveal keypad. Dan then punched in a series of numbers and he said- "You're very big."I gave him a cursory smile, "Yes. I ate all my vegetables as a child. ~ Penny Reid

My experience growing up in a rough and tumble town in the blue-collar world of Western Pennsylvania in the 1970s was that anything a man did was always more important than anything a woman did. ~ Tawni O'Dell

In the theater we're like blue-collar workers: It's a physical job, you don't make a lot of money, and you're on the road all the time. It's worth it in that it's the best job in the world, but you have to negotiate living in cities that don't always accommodate you. ~ Randy Harrison

Having parents who were hard working, blue collar, and staunchly independent, neither political party's positioning really impressed me. ~ Kurt Bills

I don't have a blue-collar job. It's more of a green collar, because of all the yellow sweat stains mixing in. ~ Jarod Kintz

It doesn't make sense. [Republicans are] not for us. You're not for my values. We're working class people mostly and blue collar. We're your cops, we're your firemen, we're your carpenters and the things we need - we need to protect our unions, we need to protect our Medicare, we need to protect the working class person. ~ John Leguizamo

I'll tell ya this: I come from an educated family. My father was an attorney representing blue collar workers, and my uncle was a chemical engineer ... on my mom's side, all my uncles were engineers - all ten of them. ~ Joe Piscopo

In Britain, the idea one could go from blue-collar beginnings to the university was so far out, it was quite unthinkable. I took a variety of jobs to pay for tuition - from ice-cream salesman to night-club bouncer. Whatever earned the most money in the least time. ~ Norman Foster

Now this is the first rule of fight club: There is nothing a blue collar Nobody in Oregon with a public school education can imagine that a million-billion people haven't already done ... ~ Chuck Palahniuk

How much do you have to pay someone to be in a George Clooney/Alexander Payne film? Nothing! Because everyone in the world wants to be a part of it. Therefore you pay nothing. And that continues until you become something they need ... I'm not that kind of actor. I'm blue collar and very replaceable. ~ Matthew Lillard

I see it routinely when I get asked to speak at conferences. I'm supposed to come cheap because, after all, I'm just a farmer. If you're smart and capable, you become a doctor, engineer, lawyer, computer technician --- anything white collar. For goodness' sake, don't wear a blue collar. That makes your mother and me a failure and our friends will wonder about our family. ~ Joel Salatin

Much of what is euphemistically known as the middle class, merely because it dresses up to go to work, is now reduced to proletarian conditions of existence. Many white-collar jobs require no more skill and pay even less than blue-collar jobs, conferring little status or security. ~ Christopher Lasch

My family were really hard-working, blue-collar people, and I didn't know the idea or concept of working and having fun. I thought you just worked and made money to support your family. ~ Debra Monk

I understand a lot of celebrities lose weight because they have the opportunity to get in shape and become healthier, but when you get so polished, you can't tell the story of a blue-collar family anymore. ~ Cristela Alonzo

Jeff built a culture that was defined by a blue-collar work ethic (symbolized by a hard hat), as well as selflessness, teamwork, relentless effort, and continuous improvement. ~ Jon Gordon

It felt like the opening line to life's little joke: an immigrant with a law degree walks into a tire factory to work a blue-collar job in a small town. ~ Phuc Tran

When 'Blue Collar TV' was on the 'WB,' we were their second-highest rated show, but they didn't know what to do with us. They had 'Reba,' which was number one, and we were number two, and they didn't want to be known as the hayseed network, so they kind of dropped us, even though we were pulling great numbers. ~ Bill Engvall

I think fans cling to me because I'm a blue-collar guy in a blue-collar city. ~ Hines Ward

The job market of the future will consist of those jobs that robots cannot perform. Our blue-collar work is pattern recognition, making sense of what you see. Gardeners will still have jobs because every garden is different. The same goes for construction workers. The losers are white-collar workers, low-level accountants, brokers, and agents. ~ Michio Kaku

Carl Barks was born in Merrill, Oregon, in 1901, grew up in a farming family, and eventually held a number of blue-collar jobs. He knew what it was to be poor and to work hard for a living. ~ Michael Dirda

My family was blue collar, a middle-class kind of thing. My father was born in Detroit, Italian-American. My mother is English. She acted on the stage with Diana Dors. Her parents were French. ~ Lorraine Bracco

I wanted to finish my career as a Steeler. I felt I just fit the mold as far as a blue-collar guy. I may not be the flashiest, most flamboyant wide receiver out there. But I get the job done for my team. ~ Hines Ward

Remodeling defies the principles of modern commerce. You shell out great sums of money to people over whom you have no authority or power, yet these same people are constantly insinuating that you're cheap. (It reminded me of medicine, another area where you shell out great sums of money to people over whom you have no authority or power, who make you feel guilty for questioning a bill.) Construction workers are the blue-collar version of the snooty salespeople at Gucci who make $8 an hour but look down on you if you balk at a $400 alligator wallet. ~ Margo Kaufman

My mom was the picture of the blue-collar mom: Two and three and four jobs to make sure that me and my sister never needed, that was her thing. ~ Ne-Yo

I'm like a blue-collar writer. I just sit down every day and I write. ~ Philip Kan Gotanda

I don't aim it at anybody specific, I don't aim my characters to make old people laugh or young people or professionals or blue collar, just whatever I think is going to be funny and it just so happens that. ~ Jeff Dunham

Blue collar workers cannot hire each other. White collar workers cannot hire each other. You have to have a businessman or a businesswomen, a business owner to hire you. And you cannot make the environment so unfriendly to them or so unprofitable or so burdensome that they go out of business,because if they go out of business, you are out of a job. ~ Duncan Hunter

There's so much built-up camaraderie and sacrifice, and football is such a tough man's game. I think that's why it's so popular. That's why so many blue-collar communities and people can really feel attracted to this because it is a blue-collar struggle that football players go through. ~ Troy Polamalu

Growing up training, I use to get up so early I would wave to the garbage men going by. So, I had this relationship with Blue Collar America and I really liked it. I felt that lots of those people looked forward to me winning. ~ Gerry Cooney

My mother claims she didn't raise her son to settle down with a construction foreman who operates his own hardware chain. Even with the M.B.A. from Harvard. But it's not really the blue-collar thing that crawled up her ass. She and Clayton haven't agreed on anything since she found out he makes more money than she does. ~ Steve Kluger

'Detroit 1-8-7' - the numbers are police slang for murder - is filmed in that blue-collar Michigan city, providing a flavor of authenticity. Detroit offers a unique visual landscape that tells the story of the city and what it's been through. ~ Michael Imperioli

The uncle ignored Gracie's father. 'In any event,' he went on, 'when brewers combine hops with yeast and grain and water, and allow the mixture to ferment -- to rot -- it magically produces an elixir so gassy with blue-collar cheer, so regal with glints of gold, so titillating with potential mischief, so triumphantly refreshing, that it seizes the soul and thrusts it toward that ethereal plateau where, to paraphrase Baudelaire, all human whimsies float and merge. ~ Tom Robbins

I grew up in a modest neighborhood just outside of Los Angeles. It was an industrial community of blue-collar, working people ... some of the hardest-working people I've ever met. ~ Hilda Solis

The schemes to set up blacks in cleaning stores, gas stations, hamburger stands and fried-chicken franchises, all the low-profit, low-capital enterprises, will rivet the Black man to the least remunerative section of the economy forever. The best such prospects offer are the dissatisfactions of blue-collar life. The big money ain't in pumping rationed gas in an Amoco station leased in your very own name, but in having stock in Exxon. ~ Louis O. Kelso

Reporters used to be blue-collar; at the Globe now, it's practically required that you have a trust fund. ~ Howie Carr

I grew up in a blue-collar neighborhood and was raised by a man who did not emote, ever ... I always cry at movies, and when I was a kid, I would try to hide it. It wasn't something a kid in Oaklyn, N.J., did. So I have these weird hang-ups about emotions. ~ Matthew Quick

Shit jobs tend to be blue collar and pay by the hour, whereas bullshit jobs tend to be white collar and salaried. Those who work shit jobs tend to be the object of indignities; they not only work hard but also are held in low esteem for that very reason. But at least they know they're doing something useful. Those who work bullshit jobs are often surrounded by honor and prestige; they are respected as professionals, well paid, and treated as high achievers - as the sort of people who can be justly proud of what they do. Yet secretly they are aware that they have achieved nothing; they feel they have done nothing to earn the consumer toys with which they fill their lives; they feel it's all based on a lie - as, indeed, it is. ~ David Graeber

Milch had a bigger cast, a bigger set (on the Melody Ranch studio, where Gene Autry had filmed very different Westerns decades earlier), and more creative freedom than he'd ever had before. There were no advertisers to answer to, and HBO was far more hands-off than the executives at NBC or ABC had been. And as a result, there was even less pretense of planning than there had been on NYPD Blue, and more improvisation. There were scripts for the first four episodes of Season 1, and after that, most of the series was written on the fly, with the cast and crew often not learning what they would be doing until the day before (if that). As Jody Worth recalls, the Deadwood writers would gather each morning for a long conversation: "We would talk about where we were going in the episode, and a lot of talk that had nothing to do with anything, a lot of Professor Milch talk, all over the map talk, which I enjoyed." Out of those daily conversations came the decisions on what scenes to write that day, to be filmed the day after. There was no system to it, no order, and the actors would be given scenes completely out of context from the rest of the episode. ~ Alan Sepinwall

I recovered my infant Judaism, but in a reformist version. ~ Lionel Blue

I am not exuding anything," said Holly through gritted teeth.
Orion tapped her shoulder. "I beg to differ. You're exuding right now, a wonderful aura. It's pastel blue with little dolphins. ~ Eoin Colfer

Whether on Ida's shady brow,
Or in the chambers of the East,
The chambers of the sun, that now
From ancient melody have ceas'd;

Whether in Heav'n ye wander fair,
Or the green corners of the earth,
Or the blue regions of the air,
Where the melodious winds have birth;

Whether on crystal rocks ye rove,
Beneath the bosom of the sea
Wand'ring in many a coral grove,
Fair Nine, forsaking Poetry!

How have you left the ancient love
That bards of old enjoy'd in you!
The languid strings do scarcely move!
The sound is forc'd, the notes are few!

- "To the Muses ~ William Blake

We are violets blue, For our sweetness found Careless in the mossy shades, Looking on the ground. Love's dropp'd eyelids and a kiss,
Such our breath and blueness is. ~ Leigh Hunt

Della & I are drunk at the top of Mont-Royal. We have an open blue plastic thermos of red wine at our feet. It's the first day of spring & it's midnight & we've been peeling off layers of winter all day. We stand facing each other, as if to exchange vows, chests heaving from racing up & down the mountain to the sky. My face is hurting from smiling so much, aching at the edges of my words. She reaches out to hold my face in her hands, dirty palms form a bowl to rest my chin. I'm standing on a tree stump so we're eye to eye. It's hard to stay steady. I worry I may start to drool or laugh, I feel so unhinged from my body. It's been one of those days I don't want to end. Our goal was to shirk all responsibility merely to enjoy the lack of everyday obligations, to create fullness & purpose out of each other. Our knees are the colour of the ground-in grass. Our boots are caked in mud caskets. Under our nails is a mixture of minerals & organic matter, knuckles scraped by tree bark. We are the thaw embodied.

She says, You have changed me, Eve, you are the single most important person in my life. If you were to leave me, I would die.

At that moment, our breath circling from my lungs & into hers, I am changed. Perhaps before this I could describe our relationship as an experiment, a happy accident, but this was irrefutable. I was completely consumed & consuming. It was as though we created some sort of object between us that we coul ~ Zoe Whittall

You look extra beautiful tonight, Ker."
"It's the collar."
"Maybe. I think it's the happiness. You wear it well."
"It's the same thing. ~ Sean Michael