Anytime you see a turtle up on top of a fence post, you know he had some help.
Alex HaleyRead
I certainly wasn't seeking any degree, the way a college confers a status symbol upon its students. My homemade education gave me, with every additional book that I read, a little bit more sensitivity to the deafness, dumbness and blindness that was afflicting the black race in America. Not long ago, an English writer telephoned me, asking questions. One was, "What's your alma mater?" I told him, "Books.
Interpretation
What this quote means
True education comes from self-study and personal experience rather than formal credentials.
In this quote, Alex Haley emphasizes the significance of self-education over formal schooling, highlighting that his real learning came from the books he read and the personal insights he gained. He reflects on how this journey of unstructured learning made him more aware of the struggles faced by the black community, suggesting that true wisdom is often found outside traditional academic settings.
Themes
EducationSelf-StudyWisdomBooksAwareness
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about lifelong learning, you could say, 'As Alex Haley put it, my alma mater is books.'
More from Alex Haley
All quotes βTying the little folks with the older folks is a great and powerful tool to preserve and to protect the family and the individual.
Alex HaleyRead
That's what happens with writing. Ingredients bubble and cook. Material becomes substance.
Alex HaleyRead
I think one of the most fascinating things you can do after you learn about your own people is to study something about the history and culture of other people.
Alex HaleyRead
In every conceivable manner, the family is link to our past, bridge to our future.
Alex HaleyRead
Either you deal with what is the reality, or you can be sure that the reality is going to deal with you.
Alex HaleyRead
Similar quotes
The Eeyore Educational System sees childhood as a waste of time, a luxury that society cannot afford . . . Put children in school at the earliest age possible; load them down with homework; take away their time, their creativity, their play, their power; then plug them into machines.
Benjamin HoffRead
I don't think anybody can teach anybody anything. I think that you learn it, but the young writer that is as I say demon-driven and wants to learn and has got to write, he don't know why, he will learn from almost any source that he finds. He will learn from older people who are not writers, he will learn from writers, but he learns it -- you can't teach it.
William FaulknerRead
There are three schoolmasters for everybody that will employ them - the senses, intelligent companions, and books.
Henry Ward BeecherRead
(...) being right all the time acquires a huge importance in education, and there is this terror of being wrong. The ego is so tied to being right that later on in life you are reluctant to accept that you are ever wrong, because you are defending not the idea but your self-esteem. (...) this terror of being wrong means that people have enormous difficulties in changing ideas.
Edward De BonoRead
I love writing about my job because I loved it, and it was a particularly interesting one when I was a young man. It was like holidays with pay to me.
James HerriotRead
Our present educational systems are all paramilitary. Their aim is to produce servants or soldiers who obey without question and who accepts their training as the best possible training. Those who are most successful in the state are those who have the most interest in prolonging the state as it is; they are also those who have the most say in the educational system, and in particular by ensuring that the educational product they want is the most highly rewarded.
John FowlesRead