Oscar Wilde, Irish playwright, novelist, poet, and short story writer:
“A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure. I don’t want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.”
William Glasser, American psychiatrist and developer of Reality Therapy and Choice Theory:
“We learn 10% of what we READ,
20% of what we HEAR,
30% of what we SEE,
50% of what we SEE and HEAR,
70% of what is DISCUSSED with OTHERS,
80% of what is EXPERIENCED PERSONALLY, and
95% of what we TEACH TO SOMEONE ELSE.”
Mortimer Adler, American Aristotelian philosopher and author:
“The purpose of learning is growth, and our minds, unlike our bodies, can continue growing as long as we live.”
Ludwig von Mises, the “uncontested dean of the Austrian School of economics“:
“Many who are self-taught far excel the doctors, masters, and bachelors of the most renowned universities.”
“Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.”
“Persistence and self-education are the keys. Nobody can teach you how to write - you have to teach yourself, using the examples of others for inspiration.”
“Vitally important for a young man or woman is, first, to realize the value of education and then to cultivate earnestly, aggressively, ceaselessly, the habit of self-education.”
“Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.”
Thomas Carlyle, Scottish essayist, satirist, and historian:
“What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.”
See also: Autodidactic Profiles: Self-educated People Who’ve Made a Difference
Interested in business self-education? Check out the Personal MBA.
Mark Twain, American humorist, satirist, writer, and lecturer:
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness - all foes to real understanding.”
Benjamin Graham, father of modern value investing:
“A serious investor is not likely to believe that the day-to-day or even month-to-month fluctuations of the stock market make him richer or poorer.”
“In the short run, the market is a voting machine, but in the long run it is a weighing machine.”
Warren Buffett, master value investor, businessman, and philanthropist:
“The stock market is a device for transferring money from the impatient to the patient.”
“I don’t look to jump over 7-foot bars: I look around for 1-foot bars that I can step over.”
“Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy only when others are fearful.”
“Look at market fluctuations as your friend rather than your enemy; profit from folly rather than participate in it.”
“Only buy something that you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years.”
“Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.”
“Rule #1: Never lose money. Rule #2: Never forget Rule #1.”
Josh Kaufman, the guy who runs this site:
“Great investors are observant and patient. You are far less observant and patient than you think you are.”
Purportedly written on a tomb of an Anglican Bishop in the crypts of Westminster Abbey:
“When I was young and free and my imagination had no limits, I dreamt of changing the world.
As I grew older and wiser, I discovered the world would not change, so I shortened my sights somewhat and decided to change only my country. But it too seemed immovable.
As I grew into my twilight years, in one last desperate attempt, I settled for changing only my family, those closest to me. Alas, they would have none of it.
And now, as I lay on my deathbead, I suddenly realize - if only I had changed myself first, then by example I might have changed my family. From their inspiration and encouragement I would then have been able to better my country, and who knows… I may have changed the world.”
Ludwig Von Mises, The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality:
“In the universe there is never and nowhere stability and immobility. Change and transformation are essential features of life. Each state of affairs is transient; each age is an age of transition. In human life there is never calm and repose. Life is a process, not a perseverance in a status quo. Yet the human mind has always been deluded by the image of an unchangeable existence. The avowed aim of all utopian movements is to put an end to history and to establish a final and permanent calm.
“The psychological reasons for this tendency are obvious. Every change alters the external conditions of life and well-being and forces people to adjust themselves anew to the modification of their environments. It hurts vested interests and threatens traditional ways of production and consumption. It annoys all those who are intellectually inert and shrink from revising their modes of thinking.”
Buckminster Fuller, self-educated visionary, designer, architect, and inventor:
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete”
B.F. Skinner, psychologist and advocate of behaviorism:
“Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.”
John Holt, American educator and proponent of homeschooling / unschooling:
“Since we can’t know what knowledge will be most needed in the future, it is senseless to try to teach it in advance. Instead, we should try to turn out people who love learning so much and learn so well that they will be able to learn whatever needs to be learned.”
Buckminster Fuller, self-educated visionary, designer, architect, and inventor:
“We may soon discover that all babies are born geniuses and only become degeniused by the erosive effects of unthinkingly maintained false assumptions of the grown-ups, with their conventional ways of “bringing up” and “educating” their young.”
See also “On Self-Education”
Og Mandino, “sales guru” and the author of the bestselling book The Greatest Salesman in the World
“Good habits are the key to all success.”
Samuel Johnson, 18th century British poet, essayist, and literary critic:
“The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.”
Dr. Frank Crane, Presbyterian minister, speaker, and columnist:
Habits are safer than rules; you don’t have to watch them. And you don’t have to keep them, either. They keep you.
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Russian writer and existentialist philosopher:
“The second half of a man’s life is made up of nothing but the habits he has acquired during the first half.”
Confucius, 5th century Chinese teacher and social philosopher:
“Men’s natures are alike; it is their habits that separate them.”
Georges Gurdjieff, Greek-Armenian mystic and spiritual teacher of sacred dance:
“Every grown-up man consists wholly of habits, although he is often unaware of it and even denies having any habits at all.”
Unknown:
“A habit is something you can do without thinking - which is why most of us have so many of them.”
Jim Ryun, American politician and former track athlete:
“Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.”
“Bad habits are easier to abandon today than tomorrow.”
Aristotle, seminal Greek naturalist and rationalist and father of Western philosophy. (Sidenote: I studied Aristotle extensively during my undergrad, and completed papers on Aristotle’s mathematics [pdf] and concept of justice.)
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.”
Warren Buffett, master investor and second wealthiest person in the world:
“People with 160 IQs can say stupid things that sound good.”
Calvin Coolidge, 30th President of the United States:
“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan “press on” has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”