People who are not well-educated, but affected the world.

Thomas Edison

Little Thomas was never a good student in school. He tried studying until the age of 8, when his teacher insulted him deeply and he decided to leave. His mother starting home-schooling him, but only for basics. He enjoyed reading, especially the works of Dickens and Shakespeare. When his mother gave him a book named “School of Physics“, Thomas became instantly an inventor.

He created a workshop in his own basement and starting making experiments. Until he was twelve, he had created a telegraph, and realised he needed money in order to complete his experiments. He got a job in order to have money for the experiments, travelling by train to a nearby city for 3 hours every day.

Over the next year, he succeeded in some of the most important inventions: such as the microphone, the phonograph, the electric light, the concrete, and he perfected the telephone, the photo camera and the electrical generator. Now, almost 2,500 patents bear his name.

Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln didn’t study at school. However, he became the leader of the movement for the emancipation of slaves during the American Civil War, and was murdered for this reason. He learnt how to read on his own, in his free time from his work as a lumberjack.

This way, he started reading books of Law and managed to get a licence to practice the profession. He was always scorned at for his lack of formal education but he became one of the greatest leaders in American history.

Mark Twain

If little Mark (whose real name is Samuel Langhorne Clemens) lived in the 21st century, he would have been given medicine because he is hyperactive. He dropped out of school at 12, when his father died and he had to work.

Ηe got a job editing in a small newspaper, and soon started to write news as well. Due to the newspaper’s popularity, he could start writing in other ones too. When he started publishing his news, he became knows worldwide. At 67, he became a university professor.

Charles Dickens

Dickens stopped his education at the age of 11, when he had to work to support his siblings, since their parents didn’t do so.

At a time, his whole family was in prison due to dept, and only Charles got away, staying in a room alone and reading books like Robinson Crusoe, hoping he would one day write something equivalent.

Charlie Chaplin

Chaplin, born Charlie Spencer, was a boy t hat never went to school. He lived with his mother and brother in London, after being abandoned by an alcoholic father who was an actor. His mother was sent to an asylum while Charlie was still young, and he ended up with his brother in an orphanage, where he wasn’t allowed adequate amounts of food or warm clothes.

When he grew up, his father found him a job as an actor. He worked until 21, when he collected enough money to go to the USA. There, he soon felt like he wanted to have an education.

He bought an English grammar book but never read it. He then got “The World as Will and Representation” by Arthur Schopenhauer, which he admitted to have read again and again over the years, without ever fully understanding it. This is the man who changed global cinema. 

Heinrich Schliemann

At the age of 8, Schliemann saw the picture of burning Troy in a magazine, and decided he wanted to discover this place. Even though his father tried to convince him it was a mythical city, the little boy never abandoned his dream.

At 14, he started working as the assistant of a merchant, and found a job on a ship that would go to America. The ship stopped in Netherlands, and Schliemann stayed there for 3 years, during which he learned how to read and write in Dutch, English, French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese.  He learned Russian when he traveled to Saint Petersbourg, and with his work in trade at the age of 25 he was already a millionaire. He finally learned Greek and Arabic, traveled to the East, and settled in Greek, where he married a Greek woman. And from there, he made his dream true: he found Troy.