Autodidact

“Finally, I said that I couldn’t see how anyone could be educated by this self-propagating system in which people pass exams, and teach others to pass exams, but nobody knows anything.”
― Richard Feynman, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! Adventures of a Curious Character

“They scolded us for not having any real hopes or real ambitions, but if we were to pursue our true ideals, would these people watch and guide us along the way?”
― Osamu Dazai, Schoolgirl

“It made me miserable that I was rapidly becoming an adult and that I was unable to do anything about it.”
― Osamu Dazai, Schoolgirl

“I wanted very much to learn to draw, for a reason that I kept to myself: I wanted to convey an emotion I have about the beauty of the world. It’s difficult to describe because it’s an emotion. It’s analogous to the feeling one has in religion that has to do with a god that controls everything in the whole universe: there’s a generality aspect that you feel when you think about how things that appear so different and behave so differently are all run “behind the scenes” by the same organization, the same physical laws. It’s an appreciation of the mathematical beauty of nature, of how she works inside; a realization that the phenomena we see result from the complexity of the inner workings between atoms; a feeling of how dramatic and wonderful it is. It’s a feeling of awe—of scientific awe—which I felt could be communicated through a drawing to someone who had also had this emotion. It could remind him, for a moment, of this feeling about the glories of the universe.”
― Richard P. Feynman, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! Adventures of a Curious Character