Wise words. I'm sure most of us would never have learned all the of the basics of mathematics on our own. Though I do remember Feynman claiming in the book that he'd come up with certain trigonometric concepts on his own and then had to un-learn the names that he'd created for them and learn to call them sin, cos etc. That was pretty mind-blowing.

I suppose the question for me is: how do you find the right balance between formal learning and the self-directed learning, experimentation and practice?