“What do William Blake, Jimi Hendrix, HP Lovecraft, Leonardo Da Vinci, James Watt and Alan Moore have in common? They are all autodidacts. That is to say that they were all, at least partially, self-taught.
Few of them finished school. None of them finished a degree course. Instead they chose to follow their curiosity and educate themselves to become specialists in their respective areas.”
http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/feb/28/could-you-be-an-autodidact