Abraham Lincoln Quotes

I soon gave up instruction for self-teaching.

Few have been taught to any purpose who have not been their own teachers.

When I was 16, I was taught by a wonderful teacher who let me ignore the Greek syllabus and just read Homer.

Books are absent teachers.

I have always felt that the true text-book for the pupil is his teacher

It was a day and age that saw no reason why one could not learn whatever was required - learn vitally anything - by the close study of books.

The ultimate goal of the educational system is to shift to the individual the burden of pursing his own education. This will not be a widely shared pursuit until we get over our odd conviction that education is what goes on in school buildings and nowhere else.

You can get help from teachers, but you are going to have to learn a lot by yourself, sitting alone in a room.

Education is a private matter between the person and the world of knowledge and experience, and has little to do with school or college.

I didn't go to school much, so I taught myself what I knew from reading.

Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.

I am your original autodidact.

My older brother bought textbooks and was able to teach himself enough to go to college. When I was 16, he returned and told me to do the same thing.

Education is what you must acquire without any interference from your schooling.

You learn best by reading a lot and writing a lot, and the most valuable lessons of all are the ones you teach yourself.

All education must be self-education.

I am in an extended self-directed course of study. That is, I am in control of my own life.

Learn of the skillful; he that teaches himself, has a fool for his master.

Self-study, in a sense of learning by yourself without anybody teaching you anything, has an enormous value.

The better part of every man's education is that which he gives himself.

Self-education only produces expressions of self.

Teaching others, he corrected himself.

If you are resolutely determined to make a lawyer of yourself, the thing is more than half done already. It is but a small matter whether you read with anyone or not. I did not read with anyone. Get the books, and read and study them till you understand them in their principal features; and that is the main thing. It is of no consequence to be in a large town while you are reading. I read at New Salem, which never had three hundred people living in it. The books, and your capacity for understanding them, are just the same in all places.

Actually, all education is self-education. A teacher is only a guide, to point out the way, and no school, no matter how excellent, can give you education. What you receive is like the outlines in a child’s coloring book. You must fill in the colors yourself.

I spent three days a week for 10 years educating myself in the public library, and it's better than college.