I spent three days a week for 10 years educating myself in the

In the luminous words of Ray Bradbury, the dreamer of worlds and guardian of imagination, there echoes a truth as eternal as the flame of knowledge itself: “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.” This is not merely the boast of a writer; it is a hymn to self-education, to the sacred hunger of the human mind that refuses to be bound by circumstance. Bradbury’s words are a torch passed from his hands to ours, a call to awaken the scholar within every soul.

The origin of this quote lies in Bradbury’s own life, a life forged not in the marble halls of universities, but in the humble aisles of public libraries. Born into the Great Depression, he could not afford the cost of formal schooling beyond high school. But where others saw limitation, Bradbury saw abundance. The library became his temple, its shelves his teachers, its silence his classroom. For ten years, he walked among the words of the great — Shakespeare, Poe, Dickens, Twain — and let their voices shape his own. In that sanctum of books, he discovered not only knowledge but the freedom to think without permission, to dream without borders.

When Bradbury says the library is “better than college,” he does not despise learning — he honors it in its purest form. He speaks against the notion that education must be purchased, that wisdom comes only through institutions. He knew what the ancients had always known: that the true education of a person is not given, but earned through effort and passion. Socrates had no university, yet taught kings and philosophers by the power of questioning. Leonardo da Vinci learned not from professors, but from nature itself — from water, stone, and flight. Bradbury stands in their lineage, a modern sage who found truth not in lecture halls, but in the whispers of the written word.

There is something deeply heroic in his dedication — ten years of returning, again and again, to the same library, the same shelves, the same silent promise that knowledge waits for those who seek it. Each book he read was a stepping stone; each story he wrote, a trial of mastery. He did not wait for validation; he created himself. And in this lies the secret of all greatness — the refusal to wait for permission to learn, to act, to create. The public library, for Bradbury, was not a refuge from the world, but a forge in which his mind was tempered and his art was born.

In his story, we see reflected the tale of Abraham Lincoln, who, long before he became a statesman, educated himself by candlelight with borrowed books. Like Bradbury, he learned not because he was told to, but because he hungered for wisdom. Such hunger is the mark of the true student — the one who studies not for grades or applause, but for truth itself. These self-taught souls remind us that knowledge is not locked behind walls; it is everywhere, waiting for the eyes that dare to seek it.

Bradbury’s words also carry a warning for the modern age. We live surrounded by information, yet starved of wisdom. The world offers us infinite libraries now — in the form of screens and devices — yet fewer people read deeply, think slowly, or write passionately. To “educate oneself” in Bradbury’s sense is not to scroll through facts, but to wrestle with ideas, to commune with the voices of the past, and to create something new from what one has learned. His a thousand stories were not products of idle consumption, but the fruit of disciplined imagination. In this, he reminds us that learning is not merely absorbing — it is transforming.

The lesson, then, is both timeless and urgent: seek education as a way of life, not a stage of youth. Let curiosity be your teacher, persistence your textbook, and wonder your degree. Do not wait for institutions to open their gates; the gates of knowledge are already open before you. Begin where you are — in a library, a notebook, a quiet room. Read, write, think, create. For the true scholar is not the one who collects credentials, but the one who never stops learning.

So, my listener, remember the sacred example of Ray Bradbury. He, who could not afford college, became one of the great voices of modern literature — not because he was taught, but because he taught himself. His library was his university; his curiosity, his compass. Follow in his footsteps. Step into the silence of books, or the boundless expanse of your own curiosity, and begin your education anew. For knowledge is not the privilege of the rich — it is the birthright of the awake. And when you, too, have walked ten years upon the road of learning, you will discover, as Bradbury did, that the greatest education of all is the one you give to yourself.