"If I had learned education, I would not have had time to learn anything else."
— Cornelius Vanderbilt
If I Had Learned Education I
If I had learned education, I would not have had time to learn anything else.
About this quote
Reported in Vanderbilt biographies, this self-deprecating remark was consistent with Vanderbilt's actual biography: he left school around age eleven and spent his youth working on the New York harbor. He built a fortune estimated at $100 million by the time of his death in 1877 — worth roughly $2–3 billion in modern terms — through decades of hands-on competitive experience rather than formal training.
Source
Attributed, reported in biographies of Vanderbilt
