What the world's greatest wits have to say about plumbers? Here's our pick of the best plumbing-related quotations.

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 in the hope to find that modest degree of independence still available under present circumstances.

Albert Einstein, who was made an honorary member of the American Plumbers and Steamfitters Union on the back of this remark.

A plumber is an adventurer who traces leaky pipes to their source.

Arthur Baer (American comic and columnist)

Not only is there no God, but try finding a plumber on Sunday.

Woody Allen (Actor, director and comedian)

Television is like the invention of indoor plumbing. It didn't change people's habits. It just kept them inside the house.

Alfred Hitchcock (Film maker)

The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as 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.

John W. Gardner (US politician)

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

George Meany (American labour leader who was born into the plumbing trade)

If I could not be a price, I would rather be a plumber.

George V, then the Prince of Wales, who lost a groomsman and almost his own life to an outbreak of typhoid caused by contamination in plumbing lines.