This is a town where he and so many of you grew up with a faith in an America where hard work matters.

WHITEHOUSE: President Obama on the American Jobs Act in Scranton, Pennsylvania | The White House

This observed hard work matters to such an extent that if you are trying to recruit the next potential chief executive officer of your company and are considering two A students, take the slightly less brainy one.

FORBES: What Makes Some MBAs Wildly Successful?

We learned that how hard you work matters more than how much you make.

WHITEHOUSE: Remarks by the First Lady at a Campaign Event

But, as is often the case in such difficult matters, Congress left the hard work to the regulators: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was told to write rules describing exactly what steps developers had to take to gain this valuable liability protection.

FORBES: Buying Into Brownfields

Or maybe Fitzgerald merely was looking at his own unhappy life--and confessing how hard it is to pretend that one's work matters when one is beset by drunkenness and depression.

FORBES: Silicon Valley's Future