Quotes About Self Taught

“Being self-taught is no disgrace; but being self-certified is another matter.”

— Hugh Nibley

“PhD, MFA, self-taught-the only things you must have to become a writer are the stamina to continue and a wily, cagey heart in the face of extremity, failure, and success.”

— Alexander Chee

“Only a self-taught man can teach others”

— Girish Kohli

“I consider myself something of a self-taught anthropologist. I try not to talk about something unless it's something I love. But if it's something that really annoys me, I fixate on it, learn something about it and then, when I'm onstage, it comes out.”

— Reggie Watts

“Over the years my mom has become a self-taught Biblical scholar.”

— Kathie Lee Gifford

“I got my first guitar in October of 1968. I'm self-taught.”

— Ernie Isley

“My great-grandfather was a self-taught man, and his library was extraordinary. I read the lot.”

— Alan Garner

“I'm pretty much a self-taught player. My swing hasn't changed a whole lot, I don't think. But I watch a lot of people.”

— Fred Couples

“I think the ability to focus is a thread that runs through so-called successful people. And that's something that can be developed. It can be self-taught.”

— Fred L. Turner

“I've written since I was 10 years old, so I guess I'm self-taught. I've had some luck along the way, I must admit, and I've worked hard.”

— Linda Lael Miller

“Apart from my work, my greatest pleasures have been mainly out-of-doors, and although I no longer ski, I greatly enjoy walking in the mountains and leading country rambles. I am fond of music, whether light or classical, and play the piano in a self-taught way. In company, I enjoy lively, way-out discussions.”

— Godfrey Hounsfield

“I am a self-taught guitarist. I just try to piece together passages that have some melodic value!”

— Sam Palladio

“The self-taught man seldom knows anything accurately, and he does not know a tenth as much as he could have known if he had worked under teachers; and, besides, he brags, and is the means of fooling other thoughtless people into going and doing as he himself has done.”

— Mark Twain

“Tiger had the advantage of high school, college, and a father who knew golf. I was self-taught. Blacks really won't play golf in great numbers until some of these basketball and football stars buy some golf courses where blacks can play.”

— Charlie Sifford

“My parents lived a modest life, and their main concern was the education of their children. My father was a self-taught man but had a great intellectual curiosity, not only for biblical and talmudic texts, but also for philosophy, psychoanalysis and history.”

— Claude Cohen-Tannoudji

“I actually went to film school, but I didn't like it. I'm basically self-taught.”

— Judah Friedlander

“I love color. When I paint, I use a lot of color. I love art that has a vibrancy of color and compositions. I adore the Impressionists, and I'm influenced strongly by them as a self-taught artist.”

— Pierce Brosnan

“I started out making personal pieces, and realized that I actually like designing. I am self-taught, so I had a lot to learn technically.”

— Yigal Azrouel

“I had no training in research as such, and as a consequence, I am, in a sense, self-taught.”

— Yves Chauvin

“My father was a trained accountant, a BCom from Sydenham College and a self-taught violinist. In the 1920s, when he was in his teens, he heard a great violinist, Jascha Heifetz, and he was so inspired listening to him that he bought himself a violin, and with a little help from an Italian teacher, he learned to play it.”

— Zubin Mehta

“I started off with violin, then I started learning guitar, then I went to piano. But I self-taught piano just because I enjoyed it. I've always really enjoyed music.”

— Jesse Spencer

“To all the ships at sea, and all the ports of call. To my family and to all friends and strangers. This is a message, and a prayer. The message is that my travels taught me a great truth. I already had what everyone is searching for and few ever find. The one person in the world who I was born to love forever. A person, like me, of the outer banks and the blue Atlantic mystery. A person rich in simple treasures. Self-made. Self-taught. A harbor where I am forever home. And no wind, or trouble or even a little death can knock down this house. The prayer is that everyone in the world can know this kind of love and be healed by it. If my prayer is heard, there will be an erasing of all guilt and all regret and an end to all anger. Please, God. Amen.”

— Nicholas. Sparks

“Yes, I'm a reasonably good self-taught historian of the 1930s and '40s. I've never wanted to write about another time or place. I wouldn't know what to say about contemporary society.”

— Alan Furst

“My brother Carl taught me how to play bass. I'm a self-taught keyboard player, though - I figured out our harmonies at the piano.”

— Brian Wilson

“James Thurber was an inspiration because his drawings were so primitive. I am self-taught - I didn't go to art school - so I thought when I started doing them, 'If James Thurber can be a cartoonist, I can,' because his stuff is very raw.”

— Bruce Eric Kaplan

“I'm a self-taught musician, so I never really had the restrictions of any one instrument. I would always just sort of pick up instruments and make noise with 'em.”

— Adrian Grenier

“Self-taught, are you?" Julian Castle asked Newt.
"Isn't everybody?" Newt inquired.
"Very good answer.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

“I have been a writer since 1949. I am self-taught. I have no theories about writing that might help others. When I write, I simply become what I seemingly must become. I am six feet two and weigh nearly two hundred pounds and am badly coordinated, except when I swim. All that borrowed meat does the writing.
In the water I am beautiful.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

“I don't think people realise how vital libraries are or what a colossal danger it would be if we were to lose any more. Having had a truncated school life myself, all of my education from the age of 17 has been self-taught. I wouldn't be the person I am today if it wasn't for the opportunities the library gave me.”

— Alan Moore

“I was always self-taught, there was no-one to study with when I was doing composition.”

— Richard Meale

“I am self-taught. In other words, God is my teacher.”

— Akiane Kramarik

“Self-taught poverty is a help toward philosophy , for the things which philosophy attempts to teach by reasoning , poverty forces us to practice .”

— Diogenes

“I'm a bit of a weird creature ... I'm self taught and went to a regular film school, not art school, and I think it's unusual for somebody to approach animation from that angle. In a sense I've sometimes consclassered myself more of a filmmaker who just happens to animate.”

— Don Hertzfeldt

“I am self taught. My dad threw me in with a drum set at the age of four and I figured it out!”

— Eric Hernandez

“An artist who is self-taught is taught by a very ignorant person indeed.”

— John Constable

“Let us not forget that group of self-taught, outsider artists who never stepped foot in any classroom and cared less about even exhibiting, and yet ended up with an audience of avid admirers.”

— Scott Kahn

“My reading was good enough to play big-band charts, but I ran into trouble with Claude (Thornhill)'s theme song "Snowfall," which had a repeating bass line in D-flat that was very difficult for me to finger using my self-taught technique. I spent one morning figuring out an alternate fingering, and that started me on the way to learning a better use of the fingerboard.”

— Bill Crow

“Self-taught are those without formal education. Most self-taught artists have missing ingredients to their work.”

— Billy Cannon

“[In eighteenth-century Britain] engineers for the most began as simple workmen, skilful and ambitious but usually illiterate and self-taught. They were either millwrights like Bramah, mechanics like Murdoch and George Stephenson, or smiths like Newcomen and Maudslay.”

— John Desmond Bernal

“Don't clock anybody, let them all clock you,
Don't be down with anybody, let them all be down with you.
Stay self-managed, self-kept, self-taught,
Be your own man; don't be borrowed, don't be bought.”

— Heavy D

“Writing is self-taught. Consulting other people only teaches you to depend on their reactions, which may or may not be legitimate. Quit looking for approval ... Learn to evaluate your own work with a dispassionate eye ... the lessons you acquire will be all the more valuable because you've mastered your craft from within.”

— Sue Grafton

“It's just a joy to be able to work with a lot of different musicians. When you play with great musicians, whether they're schooled or self-taught, they keep you on your toes.”

— Cass McCombs

“I'm completely self-taught. I absolutely don't believe in art or film schools!”

— Tom Six

“Paddy Ashdown is the only party leader who's a trained killer. Although, to be fair, Mrs Thatcher was self taught.”

— Charles Kennedy

“My anatomy was self-taught. I feel everybody has that ability. I drew instinctively. Mine was an instinctive style.”

— Jack Kirby

“I've always been interested in plants because I'm a gardener, so I have a basic understanding of botany and things like that, but it's all self-taught.”

— Michael Pollan

“I'm a self-taught musician so how I read music is kind of very weak and I kind of read my own version of tablature, I write my own crappy reminders on what I'm playing.”

— Jason Mraz

“I didn't graduate high school, so I never got a teacher's education, I'm mostly self-read, self-taught. I always loved music, so I would probably either be in a band with another group of people, or an arranger, a producer, a musicologist, a music history guy, something to do with music. Either that, or I would probably be in jail. Or dead.”

— Billy Joel

“Tips can make someone a better writer but not necessarily a good writer. That's a larger package - a matter of character. Golfing is more than keeping the left arm straight. Every good golfer is a complex engine that runs on ability, ego, determination, discipline, patience, confidence, and other qualities that are self-taught. So it is with writers and all creative artists. If their values are solid their work is likely to be solid.”

— William Zinsser

“None of us older writers had gone through such a school. We are all self-taught. And, of course, there is always, in such a school, the danger of goose-stepping, uniformed ranks. But the Serapion Brethren have already, it seems to me, outgrown this danger. Each of them has his own individuality and his own handwriting. The common thing they have derived from the studio is the art of writing with ninety-proof ink, the art of eliminating everything that is superfluous, which is, perhaps, more difficult than writing.”

— Yevgeny Zamyatin