Autodidact Quotes

“Only the autodidacts are free.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

“The Old Soul is more inclined to be a lifelong learner, constantly feeding his thirst for insight through his own persistent efforts. His learning has not been forced into him through education or learned out of obligation, but has been absorbed out of curiosity and personal choice.”
― Aletheia Luna, Old Souls: The Sages and Mystics of Our World

“For self-educated scientists and thinkers such as Charles Darwin, Srinivasa Ramanujan, Leonardo-da-Vinci, Michael Faraday, myself and many others, education is a relentless voyage of discovery. To us education is an everlasting quest for knowledge and wisdom.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The Education Decree

“To educate myself, I had to understand everything. Starting with myself, me, Marji, the woman.”
― Marjane Satrapi, The Complete Persepolis

“When I quit my university, people in my neighborhood quite literally began to gossip about me being insane, while others pitied me as a lost soul. But mark this my friend, it's the lost souls that lay the foundation for a better tomorrow, because those beings are not afraid to be lost, they are not afraid to fail, in the pursuit of something greater, something grander, than to just survive no different than the dogs do on the streets.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Time to Save Medicine

“His academic failure forced him to develop unconventionally, free of the social straightjacket that might have constrained his progress to well-worn paths.”
― Robert Kanigel, The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan

“On some intuitive level, I knew that learning had to be more than the mastery of facts. I've experienced it as an adult. I become consumed with a subject like quilting or preparing yogurt cultures, and that topic takes over my life - fabric scraps scattered on the floor, little jars of white sludge cuddled by blankets on my kitchen countertops. When I learned to play guitar in my thirties, no one had to schedule my practices. My guitar lived on a stand in the living room and I tormented our ears multiple times a day until my fingers bled. Passion for learning has that fiery, consuming, can't-stop quality.”
― Julie Bogart, The Brave Learner: Finding Everyday Magic in Homeschool, Learning, and Life

“There is no single way to be a multipotentialite.”
― Emilie Wapnick, How to Be Everything

“This book is for the people who don't want to pick a single focus and abandon all their other interests. It's for the curious, or those who find delight in learning new things, creating and morphing between identities.”
― Emilie Wapnick, How to Be Everything

“When I started training myself in Neurobiology, Psychology and Theology, mostly on the streets of Calcutta, at the book kiosks on the sidewalk, for I had no money to buy the books, I had no academic background - no college degree - no potential for earning a decent living - I was a direction-less canoe in the open sea. I did not come from a rich or learned family, nor did I have rich friends, so, as far as everybody else was concerned, my life was doomed. I come from the humblest of origins - like did Ramanujan, like did Tesla, like did many more legendary thinkers of human history. I didn't know the rules of academia - I didn't know the laws and the norms of the scientific community - all I knew was that I had to understand the humans if I were to unite them. Other than that, I had no clue to my future. I learnt by failing - I learnt by making errors - I learnt by moving slowly but surely, and by never losing my sense of awe. And that's really what science is about - it's about naivety, curiosity and awe.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Mission Reality

“I have seen the fruits of adult education. It can be done. And anyone who has worked in adult education knows that he must appeal for self-help. There are no monitors to keep adults at the task. There are no examinations and grades, none of the machinery of external discipline. The person who learns something out of school is self-disciplined. He works for merit in his own eyes, not credit from the registrar. (1940 ed. page 104)”
― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

“Now it is true that I could have learned without a teacher, but it would have been risky for me, because of my natural clumsiness. The self-taught man seldom knows anything accurately, and he does not know a tenth as much as he could have known if he had worked under teachers; and, besides, he brags, and is the means of fooling other thoughtless people into going and doing as he himself had done. There are those who imagine that the unlucky accidents of life - life's "experiences" - are in some way useful to us. I wish I could find out how. I never knew one of them to happen twice. They always change off and swap around and catch you on your inexperienced side. If personal experience can be worth anything as an education, it wouldn't seem likely that you could trip Methuselah; and yet if that old person could come back here it is more than likely that one of the first things he would do would be to take hold of one of these electric wires and tie himself all up in a knot. Now the surer thing and the wiser thing would be for him to ask somebody whether it was a good thing to take hold of. But that would not suit him; he would be one of the self-taught kind that go by experience; he would want to examine for himself. And he would find, for his instruction, that the coiled patriarch shuns the electric wire; and it would be useful to him, too, and would leave his education in quite a complete and rounded-out condition, till he should come again, some day, and go to bouncing a dynamite-can around to find out what was in it.”
― Mark Twain, Taming the Bicycle

“I Am My Teacher (Sonnet 1234)

I teach myself when I need to learn something,
I correct myself when I make mistakes.
No two year old shaped as 40, 50, 60 or 70,
Has the maturity to provide me moral guidance.

I taught myself electronics when I fell for it,
I taught myself music in my youthful high.
I taught myself languages in sheer obsession,
I taught myself aeronautics when I wanted to fly.

Critics mail, I should add "biggest ego" to my bio,
I thank them all for an astounding revelation.
If I actually behaved befitting my capacity,
Half your legends will lose their reputation.

You only see the tip of the ice-berg,
Fullness of the Himalayas you'll never see.
I chose to put many of my passions aside,
One path, one mission - one answer to calamity.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Insan Himalayanoğlu: It's Time to Defect

“Us intellectuals keep anti-social hours. It does us good.”
― Sue Townsend, The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4

“And when I think of my few acquisitions, I have to admit how fiercely the autodidact struggles for her education, and how incomplete that education remains. How illusory is any accumulation of knowledge!”
― Sheridan Hay, The Secret of Lost Things

“Para los científicos y pensadores autodidactas como Charles Darwin, Srinivasa Ramanujan, Leonardo-da-Vinci, Michael Faraday, yo y muchos otros, la educación es un viaje incesante de descubrimiento.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The Education Decree

“When I would begin to apologize for my spotty education, stating that I often felt that my passionate, haphazard reading has given me some of the faults of the autodidact, he would speak up and praise my "native intelligence." Those were healing words for me to hear...”
― Kathleen Norris, Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith

“He received no guidance, no stimulation, no money beyond the few rupees he made from tutoring. But for all the economic deadweight he represented, his family apparently discouraged him little- not enough, in any case, to stop him.”
― Robert Kanigel, The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan

“It wasn’t long before Jonathan Gull was off by himself again, far out at sea, hungry, happy, learning.”
― Richard Bach

“Servant Scientist (The Sonnet)

No academician lent me a hand,
No industry gave an ounce of backup.
If I am what I am today, it's because,
I was too stubborn to give up.
Hence I can say without hesitation,
My legacy is built only by me,
Not an industry, not a benefactor,
And definitely not some university.
I come from the working class,
With neither education nor wealth.
Hence, my priority is always people,
Not comfort, nor intellect, nor gelt.
The name is Naskar, I'm a Servant Scientist,
Painkiller to people, pesticide to prejudice.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Amantes Assemble: 100 Sonnets of Servant Sultans

“Nun stürzte ich mich voller Eifer auf die sozialistische Literatur. […] Ich las viel, ohne jede Ordnung und ohne System, die ‚Welträtsel‘ von Haeckel, Bücher von Forel, Darwin, die Reden von Ferdinand Lassalle, Engels´ ‚Lage der arbeitenden Klasse in England‘, Gedichte von Freiligrath, Herwegh und Heine. Weil die Abendstunden nicht ausreichten, um meinen Lesehunger zu befriedigen, meldete ich mich im Betrieb krank und begann mehrere Wochen ‚Weltgeschichte‘ zu studieren. […] Das Leben hatte plötzlich einen anderen, neuen Inhalt bekommen. Der Lohn war nicht gestiegen, der Hunger nicht kleiner, trotzdem schien das Leben reicher und sonniger. Jedes neue Buch war ein Erlebnis, jedes neue Wissen erweckte ein bisher unbekanntes Kraftgefühl, das Dasein war nicht mehr hoffnungslos, wir fühlten, daß es eine Erlösung aus dem täglichen Grau und Einerlei des trüben Fabriklebens geben mußte.”
― Willi Münzenberg

“In school, you get a paid education.
In nature, you get a free education.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, Night of a Thousand Thoughts

“Vande Vasudhaivam Sonnet 68

Don't be fooled by my attire,
You think of me a fool because
I want you to think of me a fool.
I am a behaviorist, and by behaving idiot
I study who's true, who's a tool.

I don't dress all ancient like a monk,
yet monks come to hear the words I utter.
I don't dress fancy like world leaders,
yet world leaders look to me for answer.

I don't wear the uniform of law,
yet coppers study me to be better cops.
I never got to put on a white coat,
yet white coats study me to be better docs.

I am the person beyond the paradigm,
I am but a reflection of the best of humankind.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Vande Vasudhaivam: 100 Sonnets for Our Planetary Pueblo

“Abhijit The Useless (A Sonnet)

At school I didn't even know the term neuroscience,
Yet today I'm a symbol of neuroscience and psychology.
As a kid I never even dreamed of becoming a scientist,
I just wanted to observe the underpinnings of reality.

After high school I failed my medical entrance exam,
Yet to the world I am a vessel of ethics in medicine.
I chose CS Engineering instead but soon dropped out,
Yet today I am the epitome of responsible engineering.

Failure and success are eternally entangled,
Masses fear them while legends feast on failure.
I never felt the urge for academic validation,
Yet today I'm regularly cited in Springer.

I never studied science in the pursuit of grades,
I accidentally became a scientist by doing science.
Grades and degrees are shortcut to social validation,
But when you are a pioneer pushing the frontiers,
all mortal validation turns null and void.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Vande Vasudhaivam: 100 Sonnets for Our Planetary Pueblo

“When you're picking a project to pursue, try not to think of it as some massive commitment. Can you think of it as an exploration, as something you're trying out? Approach your interest with a sense of curiosity and wonder, and remember to have fun!”
― Emilie Wapnick, How to Be Everything

“Assuming that the tendency to pivot between disciplines was unique to me, I felt totally alone. My peers certainly didn't have everything figured out, but they all seemed to be on a linear trajectory toward something. My path, on the other hand, was just a mess of zigzags: music, art, web design, filmmaking, law...”
― Emilie Wapnick, How to Be Everything

“You don't have to choose one thing.”
― Emilie Wapnick, How to Be Everything

“I taught myself electronics when I fell for it,
I taught myself music in my youthful high.
I taught myself languages in sheer obsession,
I taught myself aeronautics when I wanted to fly.

You only see the tip of the ice-berg,
Fullness of the Himalayas you'll never see.
I chose to put many of my passions aside,
One path, one mission - one answer to calamity.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Insan Himalayanoğlu: It's Time to Defect

“Dropout computer engineer to monk, monk to poet scientist, that's my journey.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The Humanitarian Dictator

“I appreciate the sentiment, but kindly refrain from addressing me as "Dr", it is misleading, as I am an Autodidact, and do not hold a doctorate.”
― Abhijit Naskar