David McCullough Quotes

I never let schooling interfere with my education.

I think self-education is the greatest and best thing you could ever make.

I am what libraries and librarians have made me, with little assistance from a professor of Greek and poets.

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

I educated myself. To me, school was boring.

For me, learning is a continuous process and an all-inclusive one - reading a book, learning a musical instrument or learning the martial art called taekwondo. Teach myself something new - that's my prayer.

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

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

I am your original autodidact.

I had never attended high school, but I was fairly well read.

Basically, I'm a perpetual student. I start by finding a subject I really don't know very much, but that I'm curious about. I learn about it through books in a library, by doing interviews with people who know a lot about the subject, and by going out on my own and seeing for myself what's happening.

I was always my own teacher.

In my early years I read very hard. It is a sad reflection, but a true one, that I knew almost as much at eighteen as I do now.

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

I try never to let my schooling get in the way of my education.

I taught myself more in the library than school taught me.

I am absent altogether too much to be a suitable instructor for a law-student. When a man has reached the age that Mr. Widner has,and has already been doing for himself, my judgment is, that he reads the books for himself without an instructor. That is precisely the way I came to the law.

I spent three days a week for 10 years educating myself in the public library, and it's better than college. People should educate themselves - you can get a complete education for no money. At the end of 10 years, I had read every book in the library and I'd written a thousand stories.

I've always had better luck learning things on my own. And I really love the challenge of doing it yourself and kind of being alone against the system.

All men who have turned out worth anything have had the chief hand in their own education.

One of the things that is very silly - and I hear from educators all the time - is that schools essentially teach kids to learn. They don't need school for that. Learning is what they do best.

The least of the work of learning is done in the classroom.

I would argue that education, actual learning - it is hard work. It's very personal. Your parents don't teach you anything. Your teachers don't teach you anything. The government doesn't teach you anything. You read it. You don't understand it; you read it again. You break a pencil and read it again.

I don't look to find an educated person in the ranks of university graduates, necessarily. Some of the most educated people I know have never been near a university.

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