If I had learned education I would not have had time to learn anything else.

Attributed to Cornelius Vanderbilt, the remark expresses a self-made businessman’s skepticism toward formal schooling. It plays on the idea that “education” (understood as classroom learning) can consume time better spent acquiring practical knowledge through work, observation, and risk-taking. The line also functions as retrospective self-justification: Vanderbilt, who had little formal schooling, frames his success as evidence that experiential learning can be more valuable than academic credentials. As a piece of business folklore, it reinforces a recurring American narrative that initiative and real-world experience may outweigh institutional training—though it can also be read as a rhetorical exaggeration rather than a literal claim about education’s worth.