Self-Education Quotes - What Great Thinkers Have to Say About Independent Learning

Over the coming months, this blog will give suggestions for how to become a “self-made scholar,” – a person who takes control of his or her own learning.

Schools can give you a lot of opportunities, but relying on schools to give you an education is ridiculous. I have a graduate degree, and I’ve learned more from library books and websites than I’ve ever learned in class.

But, don’t take my word for it. Check out these self-education quotes from some very perceptive thinkers:

“Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school,”
- Albert Einstein

“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”
- Mark Twain

“Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing–the rest is mere sheep-herding.”
- Ezra Loomis Pound

“Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.”
- Jim Rohn

“I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think.”
- Socrates

“The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn and change.”
-Carl Rogers

“Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.”
- Isaac Asimov

“Just as eating against one’s will is injurious to health, so studying without a liking for it spoils the memory, and it retains nothing it takes in.”
- Leonardo Da Vinci

“The idea that the majority of students attend a university for an education independent of the degree and grades is a hypocrisy everyone is happier not to expose. Occasionally some students do arrive for an education but rote and mechanical nature of the institution soon converts them to a less idealic attitude”
- Robert M. Pirsig in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintance

“Education is not a product: mark, diploma, job, money–in that order; it is a process, a never-ending one.”
- Bel Kaufman

“The secret of the man who is universally interesting is that he is universally interested.”
- William Dean Howells

“If you meet at dinner a man who has spent his life in educating himself - a rare type in our time … you rise from table richer, and conscious that a high ideal has for a moment touched and sanctified your days. But Oh! my dear Ernest, to sit next to a man who has spent his life in trying to educate others! What a dreadful experience that is!”
- Oscar Wilde