Autodidacts Quotes

Many science fiction writers are literary autodidacts who focus on the genre primarily as a literature of ideas rather than as a pure art form or a tool for the introspective examination of the human condition. I'm not entirely at ease with that self-description. ~ Charles Stross

Autodidacts tend to be cranks, obtuse and self-enclosed. A professor's most important role is to make you think with rigor: precisely, patiently, responsibly, remorselessly, and not only about your "deepest ingrained presuppositions," as my own mentor, Karl Kroeber, once wrote, but also about your "most exhilarating new insights, most of which turn out to be fallacious. ~ William Deresiewicz

Losers, like autodidacts, always know much more than winners. If you want to win, you need to know just one thing and not to waste your time on anything else: the pleasures of erudition are reserved for losers. The more a person knows, the more things have gone wrong. ~ Umberto Eco

The institution that had the greatest effect on Berenson's education was the Boston public library, the first in the country that allowed people to take books home to read them. ~ Rachel Cohen

Only the autodidacts are free. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Only the autodidacts are free. And not just in school matters - those who decommoditize, detouristify their lives. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb