biography information quotes

What more do you need to know?

Ian doesn't take his bio too seriously but uses every character to highlight everything about him.

He includes his skills as a marketer and podcast host, who he is outside work as a dad, and what he can help you do. His smiles also give the bio a sense of humor and realness.

The 17 Best Free Resume Builders We've Ever Discovered

40 Free Resume Templates for Microsoft Word (& How to Make Your Own)

Portfolios vs. Resumes — The Complete Guide

40 Interests That Deserve a Place on Your Resume

Making the Most of Electronic Resumes (Pro Tips and Tricks)

How to Write a Simple, Effective Resume (+20 Examples)

How to Write the Perfect Project Manager Resume

How to Write the Perfect Resume for Internships

Maximize Your Impact: 205 Action Verbs to Use on Your Resume

Create a compelling professional narrative for your summary, bio, or introduction.

Marketing software that helps you drive revenue, save time and resources, and measure and optimize your investments — all on one easy-to-use platform

• Quote of the Day
• Picture Quotes

Information Quotes

Standart top banner.

Intelligence is not the ability to store information, but to know where to find it.

Yes, there is a ton of information on the web, but much of it is egregiously inaccurate, unedited, unattributed and juvenile.

Information is the oxygen of the modern age.

Information is a source of learning. But unless it is organized, processed, and available to the right people in a format for decision making, it is a burden, not a benefit.

Knowledge is power. Information is liberating. Education is the premise of progress, in every society, in every family.

Bringing together the right information with the right people will dramatically improve a company's ability to develop and act on strategic business opportunities.

Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.

Knowledge is power. Information is liberating.

The first element of change is awareness. You can’t change something unless you know it exists.

The control of information is something the elite always does, particularly in a despotic form of government. Information, knowledge, is power. If you can control information, you can control people.

Put it before them briefly so they will read it, clearly so they will appreciate it, picturesquely so they will remember it and, above all, accurately so they will be guided by its light.

Information's pretty thin stuff unless mixed with experience.

The organization of information actually creates new information.

We're not in an information age anymore. We're in the information management age.

In order to understand information, we must define it; bit in order to define it, we must first understand it. Where to start?

Data is not useful until it becomes information.

Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

As a rule, he or she who has the most information will have the greatest success in life.

life is short and information endless: nobody has time for everything

War is 90% information.

We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely.

Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

Education is not the piling on of learning, information, data, facts, skills, or abilities-that's training or instruction-but is rather making visible what is hidden as a seed.

Data is not information, Information is not knowledge, Knowledge is not understanding, Understanding is not wisdom.

last adds STANDART BOTTOM BANNER

Send report.

• The author didn't say that
• There is a mistake in the text of this quote
• The quote belongs to another author
• Other error

Top Authors

Get Social with AzQuotes

Follow AzQuotes on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Every day we present the best quotes! Improve yourself, find your inspiration, share with friends

SIDE STANDART BANNER

• Javascript and RSS feeds
• WordPress plugin
• ES Version AZQuotes.ES
• Submit Quotes
• Privacy Policy

Login with your account

Create account, find your account.

How to Write a Biography

Biographies are big business. Whether in book form or Hollywood biopics, the lives of the famous and sometimes not-so-famous fascinate us.

While it’s true that most biographies are about people who are in the public eye, sometimes the subject is less well-known. Primarily, though, famous or not, the person who is written about has led an incredible life.

In this article, we will explain biography writing in detail for teachers and students so they can create their own.

While your students will most likely have a basic understanding of a biography, it’s worth taking a little time before they put pen to paper to tease out a crystal-clear definition of one.

What Is a Biography?

A biography is an account of someone’s life written by someone else . While there is a genre known as a fictional biography, for the most part, biographies are, by definition, nonfiction.

Generally speaking, biographies provide an account of the subject’s life from the earliest days of childhood to the present day or, if the subject is deceased, their death.

The job of a biography is more than just to outline the bare facts of a person’s life.

Rather than just listing the basic details of their upbringing, hobbies, education, work, relationships, and death, a well-written biography should also paint a picture of the subject’s personality and experience of life.

Full Biographies

Teaching unit.

Teach your students everything they need to know about writing an AUTOBIOGRAPHY and a BIOGRAPHY.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ( 26 reviews )

Features of a Biography

Before students begin writing a biography, they’ll need to have a firm grasp of the main features of a Biography. An excellent way to determine how well they understand these essential elements is to ask them to compile a checklist like the one-blow

Their checklists should contain the items below at a minimum. Be sure to help them fill in any gaps before moving on to the writing process.

The purpose of a biography is to provide an account of someone’s life.

Biography structure.

ORIENTATION (BEGINNING) Open your biography with a strong hook to grab the reader’s attention

SEQUENCING: In most cases, biographies are written in chronological order unless you are a very competent writer consciously trying to break from this trend.

COVER: childhood, upbringing, education, influences, accomplishments, relationships, etc. – everything that helps the reader to understand the person.

CONCLUSION: Wrap your biography up with some details about what the subject is doing now if they are still alive. If they have passed away, make mention of what impact they have made and what their legacy is or will be.

BIOGRAPHY FEATURES

LANGUAGE Use descriptive and figurative language that will paint images inside your audience’s minds as they read. Use time connectives to link events.

PERSPECTIVE Biographies are written from the third person’s perspective.

DETAILS: Give specific details about people, places, events, times, dates, etc. Reflect on how events shaped the subject. You might want to include some relevant photographs with captions. A timeline may also be of use depending upon your subject and what you are trying to convey to your audience.

TENSE Written in the past tense (though ending may shift to the present/future tense)

THE PROCESS OF WRITING A BIOGRAPHY

Like any form of writing, you will find it simple if you have a plan and follow it through. These steps will ensure you cover the essential bases of writing a biography essay.

Firstly, select a subject that inspires you. Someone whose life story resonates with you and whose contribution to society intrigues you. The next step is to conduct thorough research. Engage in extensive reading, explore various sources, watch documentaries, and glean all available information to provide a comprehensive account of the person’s life.

Creating an outline is essential to organize your thoughts and information. The outline should include the person’s early life, education, career, achievements, and any other significant events or contributions. It serves as a map for the writing process, ensuring that all vital information is included.

Your biography should have an engaging introduction that captivates the reader’s attention and provides background information on the person you’re writing about. It should include a thesis statement summarising the biography’s main points.

Writing a biography in chronological order is crucial . You should begin with the person’s early life and move through their career and achievements. This approach clarifies how the person’s life unfolded and how they accomplished their goals.

A biography should be written in a narrative style , capturing the essence of the person’s life through vivid descriptions, anecdotes, and quotes. Avoid dry, factual writing and focus on creating a compelling narrative that engages the reader.

Adding personal insights and opinions can enhance the biography’s overall impact, providing a unique perspective on the person’s achievements, legacy, and impact on society.

Editing and proofreading are vital elements of the writing process. Thoroughly reviewing your biography ensures that the writing is clear, concise, and error-free. You can even request feedback from someone else to ensure that it is engaging and well-written.

Finally, including a bibliography at the end of your biography is essential. It gives credit to the sources that were used during research, such as books, articles, interviews, and websites.

Tips for Writing a Brilliant Biography

Biography writing tip #1: choose your subject wisely.

There are several points for students to reflect on when deciding on a subject for their biography. Let’s take a look at the most essential points to consider when deciding on the subject for a biography:

Interest: To produce a biography will require sustained writing from the student. That’s why students must choose their subject well. After all, a biography is an account of someone’s entire life to date. Students must ensure they choose a subject that will sustain their interest throughout the research, writing, and editing processes.

Merit: Closely related to the previous point, students must consider whether the subject merits the reader’s interest. Aside from pure labors of love, writing should be undertaken with the reader in mind. While producing a biography demands sustained writing from the author, it also demands sustained reading from the reader.

Therefore, students should ask themselves if their chosen subject has had a life worthy of the reader’s interest and the time they’d need to invest in reading their biography.

Information: Is there enough information available on the subject to fuel the writing of an entire biography? While it might be a tempting idea to write about a great-great-grandfather’s experience in the war. There would be enough interest there to sustain the author’s and the reader’s interest, but do you have enough access to information about their early childhood to do the subject justice in the form of a biography?

Biography Writing Tip #2: R esearch ! Research! Research!

While the chances are good that the student already knows quite a bit about the subject they’ve chosen. Chances are 100% that they’ll still need to undertake considerable research to write their biography.

As with many types of writing , research is an essential part of the planning process that shouldn’t be overlooked. If students wish to give as complete an account of their subject’s life as possible, they’ll need to put in the time at the research stage.

An effective way to approach the research process is to:

1. Compile a chronological timeline of the central facts, dates, and events of the subject’s life

2. Compile detailed descriptions of the following personal traits:

•      Physical looks
•      Character traits
•      Values and beliefs

3. Compile some research questions based on different topics to provide a focus for the research:

• Childhood : Where and when were they born? Who were their parents? Who were the other family members? What education did they receive?
• Obstacles: What challenges did they have to overcome? How did these challenges shape them as individuals?
• Legacy: What impact did this person have on the world and/or the people around them?
• Dialogue & Quotes: Dialogue and quotations by and about the subject are a great way to bring color and life to a biography. Students should keep an eagle eye out for the gems that hide amid their sources.

As the student gets deeper into their research, new questions will arise that can further fuel the research process and help to shape the direction the biography will ultimately go in.

Likewise, during the research, themes will often begin to suggest themselves. Exploring these themes is essential to bring depth to biography, but we’ll discuss this later in this article.

Research Skills:

Researching for biography writing is an excellent way for students to hone their research skills in general. Developing good research skills is essential for future academic success. Students will have opportunities to learn how to:

• Gather relevant information
• Evaluate different information sources
• Select suitable information
• Organize information into a text.

Students will have access to print and online information sources, and, in some cases, they may also have access to people who knew or know the subject (e.g. biography of a family member).

These days, much of the research will likely take place online. It’s crucial, therefore, to provide your students with guidance on how to use the internet safely and evaluate online sources for reliability. This is the era of ‘ fake news ’ and misinformation after all!

COMPLETE TEACHING UNIT ON INTERNET RESEARCH SKILLS USING GOOGLE SEARCH

Teach your students ESSENTIAL SKILLS OF THE INFORMATION ERA to become expert DIGITAL RESEARCHERS.

⭐How to correctly ask questions to search engines on all devices.

⭐ How to filter and refine your results to find exactly what you want every time.

⭐ Essential Research and critical thinking skills for students.

⭐ Plagiarism, Citing and acknowledging other people’s work.

⭐ How to query, synthesize and record your findings logically.

BIOGRAPHY WRITING Tip #3: Find Your Themes In Biography Writing

Though predominantly a nonfiction genre, the story still plays a significant role in good biography writing. The skills of characterization and plot structuring are transferable here. And, just like in fiction, exploring themes in a biographical work helps connect the personal to the universal. Of course, these shouldn’t be forced; this will make the work seem contrived, and the reader may lose faith in the truthfulness of the account. A biographer needs to gain and maintain the trust of the reader.

Fortunately, themes shouldn’t need to be forced. A life well-lived is full of meaning, and the themes the student writer is looking for will emerge effortlessly from the actions and events of the subject’s life. It’s just a case of learning how to spot them.

One way to identify the themes in a life is to look for recurring events or situations in a person’s life. These should be apparent from the research completed previously. The students should seek to identify these patterns that emerge in the subject’s life. For example, perhaps they’ve had to overcome various obstacles throughout different periods of their life. In that case, the theme of overcoming adversity is present and has been identified.

Usually, a biography has several themes running throughout, so be sure your students work to identify more than one theme in their subject’s life.

BIOGRAPHY WRITING Tip: #4 Put Something of Yourself into the Writing

While the defining feature of a biography is that it gives an account of a person’s life, students must understand that this is not all a biography does. Relating the facts and details of a subject’s life is not enough. The student biographer should not be afraid to share their thoughts and feelings with the reader throughout their account of their subject’s life.

The student can weave some of their personality into the fabric of the text by providing commentary and opinion as they relate the events of the person’s life and the wider social context at the time. Unlike the detached and objective approach we’d expect to find in a history textbook, in a biography, student-writers should communicate their enthusiasm for their subject in their writing.

This makes for a more intimate experience for the reader, as they get a sense of getting to know the author and the subject they are writing about.

Biography Examples For Students

• Year 5 Example
• Year 7 Example
• Year 9 Example

“The Rock ‘n’ Roll King: Elvis Presley”

Elvis Aaron Presley, born on January 8, 1935, was an amazing singer and actor known as the “King of Rock ‘n’ Roll.” Even though he’s been dead for nearly 50 years, I can’t help but be fascinated by his incredible life!

Elvis grew up in Tupelo, Mississippi, in a tiny house with his parents and twin brother. His family didn’t have much money, but they shared a love for music. Little did they know Elvis would become a music legend!

When he was only 11 years old, Elvis got his first guitar. He taught himself to play and loved singing gospel songs. As he got older, he started combining different music styles like country, blues, and gospel to create a whole new sound – that’s Rock ‘n’ Roll!

In 1954, at the age of 19, Elvis recorded his first song, “That’s All Right.” People couldn’t believe how unique and exciting his music was. His famous hip-swinging dance moves also made him a sensation!

Elvis didn’t just rock the music scene; he also starred in movies like “Love Me Tender” and “Jailhouse Rock.” But fame came with challenges. Despite facing ups and downs, Elvis kept spreading happiness through his music.

Tragically, Elvis passed away in 1977, but his music and charisma live on. Even today, people worldwide still enjoy his songs like “Hound Dog” and “Can’t Help Falling in Love.” Elvis Presley’s legacy as the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll will live forever.

Long Live the King: I wish I’d seen him.

Elvis Presley, the Rock ‘n’ Roll legend born on January 8, 1935, is a captivating figure that even a modern-day teen like me can’t help but admire. As I delve into his life, I wish I could have experienced the magic of his live performances.

Growing up in Tupelo, Mississippi, Elvis faced challenges but found solace in music. At 11, he got his first guitar, a symbol of his journey into the world of sound. His fusion of gospel, country, and blues into Rock ‘n’ Roll became a cultural phenomenon.

The thought of being in the audience during his early performances, especially when he recorded “That’s All Right” at 19, sends shivers down my spine. Imagining the crowd’s uproar and feeling the revolutionary energy of that moment is a dream I wish I could have lived.

Elvis wasn’t just a musical prodigy; he was a dynamic performer. His dance moves, the embodiment of rebellion, and his roles in films like “Love Me Tender” and “Jailhouse Rock” made him a true icon.

After watching him on YouTube, I can’t help but feel a little sad that I’ll never witness the King’s live performances. The idea of swaying to “Hound Dog” or being enchanted by “Can’t Help Falling in Love” in person is a missed opportunity. Elvis may have left us in 1977, but he was the king of rock n’ roll. Long live the King!

Elvis Presley: A Teen’s Take on the Rock ‘n’ Roll Icon”

Elvis Presley, born January 8, 1935, was a revolutionary force in the music world, earning his title as the “King of Rock ‘n’ Roll.” Exploring his life, even as a 16-year-old today, I’m captivated by the impact he made.

Hailing from Tupelo, Mississippi, Elvis grew up in humble beginnings, surrounded by the love of his parents and twin brother. It’s inspiring to think that, despite financial challenges, this young man would redefine the music scene.

At 11, Elvis got his first guitar, sparking a self-taught journey into music. His early gospel influences evolved into a unique fusion of country, blues, and gospel, creating the electrifying genre of Rock ‘n’ Roll. In 1954, at only 19, he recorded “That’s All Right,” marking the birth of a musical legend.

Elvis wasn’t just a musical innovator; he was a cultural phenomenon. His rebellious dance moves and magnetic stage presence challenged the norms. He transitioned seamlessly into acting, starring in iconic films like “Love Me Tender” and “Jailhouse Rock.”

However, fame came at a cost, and Elvis faced personal struggles. Despite the challenges, his music continued to resonate. Even now, classics like “Hound Dog” and “Can’t Help Falling in Love” transcend generations.

Elvis Presley’s impact on music and culture is undeniable. He was known for his unique voice, charismatic persona, and electrifying performances. He sold over one billion records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling solo artists in history. He received numerous awards throughout his career, including three Grammy Awards and the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

Elvis’s influence can still be seen in today’s music. Many contemporary artists, such as Bruno Mars, Lady Gaga, and Justin Timberlake, have cited Elvis as an inspiration. His music continues to be featured in movies, TV shows, and commercials.

Elvis left us in 1977, but his legacy lives on. I appreciate his breaking barriers and fearlessly embracing his artistic vision. Elvis Presley’s impact on music and culture is timeless, a testament to the enduring power of his artistry. His music has inspired generations and will continue to do so for many years to come.

Teaching Resources

Use our resources and tools to improve your student’s writing skills through proven teaching strategies.

BIOGRAPHY WRITING TEACHING IDEAS AND LESSONS

We have compiled a sequence of biography-related lessons or teaching ideas that you can follow as you please. They are straightforward enough for most students to follow without further instruction.

BIOGRAPHY LESSON IDEA # 1:

This session aims to give students a broader understanding of what makes a good biography.

Once your students have compiled a comprehensive checklist of the main features of a biography, allow them to use it to assess some biographies from your school library or on the internet using the feature checklist.

When students have assessed a selection of biographies, take some time as a class to discuss them. You can base the discussion around the following prompts:

• Which biographies covered all the criteria from their checklist?
• Which biographies didn’t?
• Which biography was the most readable in terms of structure?
• Which biography do you think was the least well-structured? How would you improve this?

Looking at how other writers have interpreted the form will help students internalize the necessary criteria before attempting to produce a biography. Once students have a clear understanding of the main features of the biography, they’re ready to begin work on writing a biography.

When the time does come to put pen to paper, be sure they’re armed with the following top tips to help ensure they’re as well prepared as possible.

BIOGRAPHY LESSON IDEA # 2:

This session aims to guide students through the process of selecting the perfect biography subject.

Instruct students to draw up a shortlist of three potential subjects for the biography they’ll write.

Using the three criteria mentioned in the writing guide (Interest, Merit, and Information), students award each potential subject a mark out of 5 for each of the criteria. In this manner, students can select the most suitable subject for their biography.

BIOGRAPHY LESSON IDEA # 3:

This session aims to get students into the researching phase, then prioritise and organise events chronologically.

Students begin by making a timeline of their subject’s life, starting with their birth and ending with their death or the present day. If the student has yet to make a final decision on the subject of their biography, a family member will often serve well for this exercise as a practice exercise.

Students should research and gather the key events of the person’s life, covering each period of their life from when they were a baby, through childhood and adolescence, right up to adulthood and old age. They should then organize these onto a timeline. Students can include photographs with captions if they have them.

They can present these to the class when they have finished their timelines.

BIOGRAPHY LESSON IDEA # 4:

Instruct students to look over their timeline, notes, and other research. Challenge them to identify three patterns that repeat throughout the subject’s life and sort all the related events and incidents into specific categories.

Students should then label each category with a single word. This is the thematic concept or the broad general underlying idea. After that, students should write a sentence or two expressing what the subject’s life ‘says’ about that concept.

This is known as the thematic statement . With the thematic concepts and thematic statements identified, the student now has some substantial ideas to explore that will help bring more profound meaning and wider resonance to their biography.

BIOGRAPHY LESSON IDEA # 5:

Instruct students to write a short objective account of an event in their own life. They can write about anyone from their past. It needn’t be more than a couple of paragraphs, but the writing should be strictly factual, focusing only on the objective details of what happened.

Once they have completed this, it’s time to rewrite the paragraph, but they should include some opinion and personal commentary this time.

The student here aims to inject some color and personality into their writing, to transform a detached, factual account into a warm, engaging story.

A COMPLETE UNIT ON TEACHING BIOGRAPHIES

Teach your students to write AMAZING BIOGRAPHIES & AUTOBIOGRAPHIES using proven RESEARCH SKILLS and WRITING STRATEGIES .

• Understand the purpose of both forms of biography.
• Explore the language and perspective of both.
• Prompts and Challenges to engage students in writing a biography.
• Dedicated lessons for both forms of biography.
• Biographical Projects can expand students’ understanding of reading and writing a biography.
• A COMPLETE 82-PAGE UNIT – NO PREPARATION REQUIRED.

FREE Biography Writing Graphic Organizer

Use this valuable tool in the research and writing phases to keep your students on track and engaged.

WRITING CHECKLIST & RUBRIC BUNDLE

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (92 Reviews)

To Conclude

By this stage, your students should have an excellent technical overview of a biography’s essential elements.

They should be able to choose their subject in light of how interesting and worthy they are, as well as give consideration to the availability of information out there. They should be able to research effectively and identify emerging themes in their research notes. And finally, they should be able to bring some of their personality and uniqueness into their retelling of the life of another.

Remember that writing a biography is not only a great way to develop a student’s writing skills; it can be used in almost all curriculum areas. For example, to find out more about a historical figure in History, to investigate scientific contributions to Science, or to celebrate a hero from everyday life.

Biography is an excellent genre for students to develop their writing skills and to find inspiration in the lives of others in the world around them.

HOW TO WRITE A BIOGRAPHY TUTORIAL VIDEO

OTHER GREAT ARTICLES RELATED TO BIOGRAPHY WRITING

How to write an Autobiography

How to Write a Historical Recount Text

15 Awesome Recount & Personal Narrative Topics

Personal Narrative Writing Guide

40 Inspirational Quotes About Living

“Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.” —Maya Angelou

What Is Life About? The Best Quotes We Could Find

by TeachThought Staff

“People use drugs, legal and illegal, because their lives are intolerably painful or dull. They hate their work and find no rest in their leisure. They are estranged from their families and their neighbors. It should tell us something that in healthy societies drug use is celebrative, convivial, and occasional, whereas among us it is lonely, shameful, and addictive. We need drugs, apparently, because we have lost each other.” — Wendell Berry

40 Quotes About Living

“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.” — John Lennon

“In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.” — Robert Frost

“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.” — Confucius

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.” — Oscar Wilde

“Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” — George Bernard Shaw

“You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.” — Mae West

“The big lesson in life, baby, is never be scared of anyone or anything.” — Frank Sinatra

“Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined.” — Henry David Thoreau

“As a culture and society, we prosper and suffer through our language and definitions.” —Terrell Heick

“Life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you respond to it.” — Charles R. Swindoll

“Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive.” — Elbert Hubbard

“Keep smiling, because life is a beautiful thing and there’s so much to smile about.” — Marilyn Monroe

“The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” — Nelson Mandela

“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.” — Helen Keller

“Not how long, but how well you have lived is the main thing.” — Seneca

“Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.” — William James

“The purpose of our lives is to be happy.” — Dalai Lama

“A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.” — Charles Darwin

“Life is short, and it is up to you to make it sweet.” — Sarah Louise Delany

“Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.” — Albert Einstein

“Life is made of ever so many partings welded together.” — Charles Dickens

“Don’t count the days, make the days count.” — Muhammad Ali

 “Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

“It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.” — J.K. Rowling

“The only impossible journey is the one you never begin.” — Tony Robbins

“Every moment is a fresh beginning.” — T.S. Eliot

“Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.” — William James

“The best way to predict your future is to create it.” — Abraham Lincoln

“The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.” — Bertrand Russell

“Life itself is the most wonderful fairy tale.” — Hans Christian Andersen

“Your time is limited, don’t waste it living someone else’s life.” — Steve Jobs

“The longer I live, the more beautiful life becomes.” — Frank Lloyd Wright

“Life’s tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late.” — Benjamin Franklin

“Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

“There are no mistakes, only opportunities.” — Tina Fey

“In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.” — Abraham Lincoln

“Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.” — Dr. Seuss

“Life is short, and truth works far and lives long: let us then speak the truth.” — Arthur Schopenhauer

“Let us live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.” — Mark Twain

“The best thing to hold onto in life is each other.” — Audrey Hepburn

What Is Life About Quotes? The Best Answers We Could Find

TeachThought is an organization dedicated to innovation in education through the growth of outstanding teachers.

How to write a biography essay

• March 29, 2022

A biography essay is a type of academic writing that tells the story of someone’s life, typically focusing on their achievements, struggles, and impact on the world.

In this article, we’ll provide you with a step-by-step guide on how to write a compelling biography essay that engages readers and tells the story of a person’s life in a meaningful way.

Choose a person to write a biography

First you need to choose a person to write about. The person should have made significant contributions to his/her respective field. This person should also be well-known as you will need resources to find information.

For this guide, we will be writing our biography essay on French-Algerian philosopher and author Albert Camus . There’re some reasons why Albert Camus is a suitable topic for a biography essay:

• He is an influential person in his field.
• He has many works that we can refer to in our essay .​
• There are many reliable sources where we can find information about him. ​

Gather information on the person

You need some information about your the person you chose. While getting this information, pay attention to two main factors: the credibility of your source and what information you are putting in your essay.

Credibility of your source

• Does this source have any authors and/or editors listed?
• Does this source cite or link to trustworthy sources?​
• Is this source prepared professionally?​

If your sources check all the boxes, they are most likely reliable sources . However, if a source doesn’t have any authors, has no citation, or is poorly written, consider it risky.

Information included in the essay

• Is this information useful in the context of my essay?
• Is this development remarkable in my subject’s life story? ​

You can definitely add the information if they meet these criteria. If not, it’s best to keep them out.

Use of important information on the person

Now, we will be choosing information from Albert Camus’ life story to include in our biography essay. 

• Albert Camus was born on 7 November 1913 in French Algeria. (We choose to include this information because it is reasonable to start with this line for a biography essay.)
• He published his essay The Myth of Sisyphus in the year 1942. (This information is essential because this essay explains his notion of “the absurd,” a philosophy he is widely known for.)​
• He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957. (This event is a significant acknowledgment of his works; therefore, it should be included.)​
• He died on 4 January 1960 in France. (A reasonable ending point for a biography essay.) ​

Create an outline

Preparing an outline is essential for biography essays just like any other essay . You can follow our typical outline preparing process in this step because biography essays also adhere to the traditional essay structure.

Biography Essay Outline Example

Albert Camus Biography Essay

• Open with a curious quote by Albert Camus
• Explain how Camus contributed to his field
• Further explore Albert Camus' stance on the field
• Present your thesis statement
• Topic sentence of your paragraph
• Albert's accomplishments and more personal information
• Closing sentence
• Restate your thesis statement
• Mention the importance of Albert Camus
• Finish your essay with memorable concluding sentences by highlighting Camus' importance

Important reminder

Write an introduction.

The introduction paragraph is crucial. Because you need to grab the reader’s attention at this part. This is where a hook sentence is useful. With a hook sentence , you can start your essay in multiple interesting directions for you reader: 

• Start your introduction with a quote from your subject, especially one that reveals their personality.
• Start with an intriguing story or an interesting anecdote about your subject. ​
• Start by informing the reader about a significant accomplishment of your subject.​

Biography essay introduction example

“You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.” This is a quote by French-Algerian philosopher, writer, and journalist Albert Camus. Camus was born in French Algeria on 7 November 1913. Opening: Intriguing quote that grabs the reader’s attention and summarizes Camus’ philosophy He is one of the most prominent writers of absurdist philosophical thought. Subject: A sentence which explains the subject’s contribution to their field. Through his works, Camus contributed to the rise of the absurdist philosophy, which was essentially a response to nihilism. Stance: Further explanation of the subject’s stance on the field He wrote works that conveyed an abiding faith in the human race’s displaced but still righteous situation. Thesis statement: You highlight your stand and main focus of the essay.

Biography essay body paragraphs

This is the section where the results of your research come in. Like other types of essays, body paragraphs are the central part of your biography essay (see biography essay example ).

Through these paragraphs, you will discuss the milestones in your subject’s life, their accomplishments, and their works.

Biography essay body paragraph example

During his literary career, Camus published his works in three cycles. In each cycle, he published a novel, an essay, and a play. The first cycle of his works was on “the absurd,” and they were published from 1942 to 1944. Topic sentence: Further exploration of the claim presented in the introduction. This cycle’s works were some of his most significant works: The Stranger as the novel, The Myth of Sisyphus as the essay, and Caligula as the play. Camus also explored the concepts “the revolt” and “the love” through the cycle structure. Subject’s accomplishments: Reveal of the subject’s extensive work on the field Through his major works, Camus earned the Nobel Prize for Literature, and he then published his work named Algerian Chronicles. This work revealed his pacifist tendencies. Personal information: Brief introduction into the subject’s personal reflections. After Camus’ death, two more works of his were released. One is his novel titled A Happy Death and an unfinished autobiographical novel named The First Man. Some of the significant themes Camus explores through his literary career are alienation, rebellion, and guilt. Closing sentence: Information on the subject’s identity.

Biography essay conclusion

In your conclusion paragraph , what you need to do is to bring in your final thoughts. Do not make the mistake (see common mistakes ) of only repeating the claims you made throughout the essay.

As an alternative, you can choose to tie your subject’s legacy into the current day . You can ask yourself these questions to figure out what to say in your conclusion paragraph:

• What was my subject’s contribution to the ideas/events that are relevant today?
• Are they still remembered? How do people honor their work?​
• Out of the people that are significant today, who did my subject influence?​

Biography essay conclusion example

Camus died on 4 January 1960, when he was only 46 years old. He died in a car crash, and many scholars point out the “absurdity” of his death. Restatement: Connection with the subject’s main works Since Camus himself had previously stated that the most absurd way of dying he could think of would be a car accident, people regard his death as ironic. Today, Albert Camus is still considered to be one of the most significant thinkers of Western philosophy. Importance of the person: The subject’s relevancy today He is acknowledged as one of the most critical contributors of the absurdist philosophy. He is referred to as one of the best literary writers of his genre and one of the best thinkers of his age. Closing statement: Concluding sentences by highlighting the subject’s influence

Now you know all the separate parts of a biography essay and how to create them.  Remember that these steps can be used in all academic essays.

Before closing this article, let’s have a look at an extensive biography essay example on Mustafa Kemal Ataturk , you see below. 

5-Paragraph Biography Essay Example

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk: The Modernizer of Turkey

Introduction

Body paragraphs, key takeaways.

• A biography essay should tell the story of a person's life, but also focus on their contributions and impact.
• Start by doing thorough research and organizing your information into a chronological outline.
• Use vivid details and anecdotes to bring your subject to life and make the essay engaging for the reader.
• Incorporate analysis and reflection to help the reader understand the significance of the subject's life and work.
• End with a strong conclusion that summarizes the key points and leaves the reader with a lasting impression.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you start a biography essay.

Start your biography essay by giving a general information about your subject, such as their profession or importance.

What is biography example?

Biography is a literary work in which a person’s life is narrated. They are based on facts, and the main purpose of them is educating people about well-known individuals.

How do you write an outline for a biography?

A proper biography outline should include details about the information that will be presented in the introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion.

Recently on Learning Center

How to write a discussion essay (with steps & examples), writing a great poetry essay (steps & examples), how to write a process essay (steps & examples), writing a common app essay (steps & examples), how to write a synthesis essay (steps & examples), how to write a horror story.

Albert Einstein

One of the most influential scientists of the 20 th century, Albert Einstein was a physicist who developed the theory of relativity.

We may earn commission from links on this page, but we only recommend products we back.

Who Was Albert Einstein?

Quick facts, early life, family, and education, einstein’s iq, patent clerk, inventions and discoveries, nobel prize in physics, wives and children, travel diaries, becoming a u.s. citizen, einstein and the atomic bomb, time travel and quantum theory, personal life, death and final words, einstein’s brain, einstein in books and movies: "oppenheimer" and more.

Albert Einstein was a German mathematician and physicist who developed the special and general theories of relativity. In 1921, he won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his explanation of the photoelectric effect. In the following decade, he immigrated to the United States after being targeted by the German Nazi Party. His work also had a major impact on the development of atomic energy. In his later years, Einstein focused on unified field theory. He died in April 1955 at age 76. With his passion for inquiry, Einstein is generally considered the most influential physicist of the 20 th century.

FULL NAME: Albert Einstein BORN: March 14, 1879 DIED: April 18, 1955 BIRTHPLACE: Ulm, Württemberg, Germany SPOUSES: Mileva Einstein-Maric (1903-1919) and Elsa Einstein (1919-1936) CHILDREN: Lieserl, Hans, and Eduard ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Pisces

Albert Einstein was born on March 14, 1879, in Ulm, Württemberg, Germany. He grew up in a secular Jewish family. His father, Hermann Einstein, was a salesman and engineer who, with his brother, founded Elektrotechnische Fabrik J. Einstein & Cie, a Munich-based company that mass-produced electrical equipment. Einstein’s mother, the former Pauline Koch, ran the family household. Einstein had one sister, Maja, born two years after him.

Einstein attended elementary school at the Luitpold Gymnasium in Munich. However, he felt alienated there and struggled with the institution’s rigid pedagogical style. He also had what were considered speech challenges. However, he developed a passion for classical music and playing the violin, which would stay with him into his later years. Most significantly, Einstein’s youth was marked by deep inquisitiveness and inquiry.

Toward the end of the 1880s, Max Talmud, a Polish medical student who sometimes dined with the Einstein family, became an informal tutor to young Einstein. Talmud had introduced his pupil to a children’s science text that inspired Einstein to dream about the nature of light. Thus, during his teens, Einstein penned what would be seen as his first major paper, “The Investigation of the State of Aether in Magnetic Fields.”

Hermann relocated the family to Milan, Italy, in the mid-1890s after his business lost out on a major contract. Einstein was left at a relative’s boarding house in Munich to complete his schooling at the Luitpold.

Faced with military duty when he turned of age, Einstein allegedly withdrew from classes, using a doctor’s note to excuse himself and claim nervous exhaustion. With their son rejoining them in Italy, his parents understood Einstein’s perspective but were concerned about his future prospects as a school dropout and draft dodger.

Einstein was eventually able to gain admission into the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, specifically due to his superb mathematics and physics scores on the entrance exam. He was still required to complete his pre-university education first and thus attended a high school in Aarau, Switzerland, helmed by Jost Winteler. Einstein lived with the schoolmaster’s family and fell in love with Winteler’s daughter Marie. Einstein later renounced his German citizenship and became a Swiss citizen at the dawn of the new century.

Einstein’s intelligence quotient was estimated to be around 160, but there are no indications he was ever actually tested.

Psychologist David Wechsler didn’t release the first edition of the WAIS cognitive test, which evolved into the WAIS-IV test commonly used today, until 1955—shortly before Einstein’s death. The maximum score of the current version is 160, with an IQ of 135 or higher ranking in the 99 th percentile.

Magazine columnist Marilyn vos Savant has the highest-ever recorded IQ at 228 and was featured in the Guinness Book of World Records in the late 1980s. However, Guinness discontinued the category because of debates about testing accuracy. According to Parade , individuals believed to have higher IQs than Einstein include Leonardo Da Vinci , Marie Curie , Nikola Tesla , and Nicolaus Copernicus .

After graduating from university, Einstein faced major challenges in terms of finding academic positions, having alienated some professors over not attending class more regularly in lieu of studying independently.

Einstein eventually found steady work in 1902 after receiving a referral for a clerk position in a Swiss patent office. While working at the patent office, Einstein had the time to further explore ideas that had taken hold during his university studies and thus cemented his theorems on what would be known as the principle of relativity.

In 1905—seen by many as a “miracle year” for the theorist—Einstein had four papers published in the Annalen der Physik , one of the best-known physics journals of the era. Two focused on the photoelectric effect and Brownian motion. The two others, which outlined E=MC 2 and the special theory of relativity, were defining for Einstein’s career and the course of the study of physics.

As a physicist, Einstein had many discoveries, but he is perhaps best known for his theory of relativity and the equation E=MC 2 , which foreshadowed the development of atomic power and the atomic bomb.

Theory of Relativity

Einstein first proposed a special theory of relativity in 1905 in his paper “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies,” which took physics in an electrifying new direction. The theory explains that space and time are actually connected, and Einstein called this joint structure space-time.

By November 1915, Einstein completed the general theory of relativity, which accounted for gravity’s relationship to space-time. Einstein considered this theory the culmination of his life research. He was convinced of the merits of general relativity because it allowed for a more accurate prediction of planetary orbits around the sun, which fell short in Isaac Newton ’s theory. It also offered a more expansive, nuanced explanation of how gravitational forces worked.

Einstein’s assertions were affirmed via observations and measurements by British astronomers Sir Frank Dyson and Sir Arthur Eddington during the 1919 solar eclipse, and thus a global science icon was born. Today, the theories of relativity underpin the accuracy of GPS technology, among other phenomena.

Even so, Einstein did make one mistake when developing his general theory, which naturally predicted the universe is either expanding or contracting. Einstein didn’t believe this prediction initially, instead holding onto the belief that the universe was a fixed, static entity. To account for, this he factored in a “cosmological constant” to his equation. His later theories directly contracted this idea and asserted that the universe could be in a state of flux. Then, astronomer Edwin Hubble deduced that we indeed inhabit an expanding universe. Hubble and Einstein met at the Mount Wilson Observatory near Los Angeles in 1931.

Decades after Einstein’s death, in 2018, a team of scientists confirmed one aspect of Einstein’s general theory of relativity: that the light from a star passing close to a black hole would be stretched to longer wavelengths by the overwhelming gravitational field. Tracking star S2, their measurements indicated that the star’s orbital velocity increased to over 25 million kph as it neared the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy, its appearance shifting from blue to red as its wavelengths stretched to escape the pull of gravity.

Einstein’s E=MC²

Einstein’s 1905 paper on the matter-energy relationship proposed the equation E=MC²: the energy of a body (E) is equal to the mass (M) of that body times the speed of light squared (C²). This equation suggested that tiny particles of matter could be converted into huge amounts of energy, a discovery that heralded atomic power.

Famed quantum theorist Max Planck backed up the assertions of Einstein, who thus became a star of the lecture circuit and academia, taking on various positions before becoming director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics (today is known as the Max Planck Institute for Physics) from 1917 to 1933.

In 1921, Einstein won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his explanation of the photoelectric effect, since his ideas on relativity were still considered questionable. He wasn’t actually given the award until the following year due to a bureaucratic ruling, and during his acceptance speech, he still opted to speak about relativity.

Einstein married Mileva Maric on January 6, 1903. While attending school in Zurich, Einstein met Maric, a Serbian physics student. Einstein continued to grow closer to Maric, but his parents were strongly against the relationship due to her ethnic background.

Nonetheless, Einstein continued to see her, with the two developing a correspondence via letters in which he expressed many of his scientific ideas. Einstein’s father passed away in 1902, and the couple married shortly thereafter.

Einstein and Mavic had three children. Their daughter, Lieserl, was born in 1902 before their wedding and might have been later raised by Maric’s relatives or given up for adoption. Her ultimate fate and whereabouts remain a mystery. The couple also had two sons: Hans Albert Einstein, who became a well-known hydraulic engineer, and Eduard “Tete” Einstein, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia as a young man.

The Einsteins’ marriage would not be a happy one, with the two divorcing in 1919 and Maric having an emotional breakdown in connection to the split. Einstein, as part of a settlement, agreed to give Maric any funds he might receive from possibly winning the Nobel Prize in the future.

During his marriage to Maric, Einstein had also begun an affair some time earlier with a cousin, Elsa Löwenthal . The couple wed in 1919, the same year of Einstein’s divorce. He would continue to see other women throughout his second marriage, which ended with Löwenthal’s death in 1936.

In his 40s, Einstein traveled extensively and journaled about his experiences. Some of his unfiltered private thoughts are shared two volumes of The Travel Diaries of Albert Einstein .

The first volume , published in 2018, focuses on his five-and-a-half month trip to the Far East, Palestine, and Spain. The scientist started a sea journey to Japan in Marseille, France, in autumn of 1922, accompanied by his second wife, Elsa. They journeyed through the Suez Canal, then to Sri Lanka, Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Japan. The couple returned to Germany via Palestine and Spain in March 1923.

The second volume , released in 2023, covers three months that he spent lecturing and traveling in Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil in 1925.

The Travel Diaries contain unflattering analyses of the people he came across, including the Chinese, Sri Lankans, and Argentinians, a surprise coming from a man known for vehemently denouncing racism in his later years. In an entry for November 1922, Einstein refers to residents of Hong Kong as “industrious, filthy, lethargic people.”

In 1933, Einstein took on a position at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, where he would spend the rest of his life.

At the time the Nazis, led by Adolf Hitler , were gaining prominence with violent propaganda and vitriol in an impoverished post-World War I Germany. The Nazi Party influenced other scientists to label Einstein’s work “Jewish physics.” Jewish citizens were barred from university work and other official jobs, and Einstein himself was targeted to be killed. Meanwhile, other European scientists also left regions threatened by Germany and immigrated to the United States, with concern over Nazi strategies to create an atomic weapon.

Not long after moving and beginning his career at IAS, Einstein expressed an appreciation for American meritocracy and the opportunities people had for free thought, a stark contrast to his own experiences coming of age. In 1935, Einstein was granted permanent residency in his adopted country and became an American citizen five years later.

In America, Einstein mostly devoted himself to working on a unified field theory, an all-embracing paradigm meant to unify the varied laws of physics. However, during World War II, he worked on Navy-based weapons systems and made big monetary donations to the military by auctioning off manuscripts worth millions.

In 1939, Einstein and fellow physicist Leo Szilard wrote to President Franklin D. Roosevelt to alert him of the possibility of a Nazi bomb and to galvanize the United States to create its own nuclear weapons.

The United States would eventually initiate the Manhattan Project , though Einstein wouldn’t take a direct part in its implementation due to his pacifist and socialist affiliations. Einstein was also the recipient of much scrutiny and major distrust from FBI director J. Edgar Hoover . In July 1940, the U.S. Army Intelligence office denied Einstein a security clearance to participate in the project, meaning J. Robert Oppenheimer and the scientists working in Los Alamos were forbidden from consulting with him.

Einstein had no knowledge of the U.S. plan to use atomic bombs in Japan in 1945. When he heard of the first bombing at Hiroshima, he reportedly said, “Ach! The world is not ready for it.”

Einstein became a major player in efforts to curtail usage of the A-bomb. The following year, he and Szilard founded the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists, and in 1947, via an essay for The Atlantic Monthly , Einstein espoused working with the United Nations to maintain nuclear weapons as a deterrent to conflict.

After World War II, Einstein continued to work on his unified field theory and key aspects of his general theory of relativity, including time travel, wormholes, black holes, and the origins of the universe.

However, he felt isolated in his endeavors since the majority of his colleagues had begun focusing their attention on quantum theory. In the last decade of his life, Einstein, who had always seen himself as a loner, withdrew even further from any sort of spotlight, preferring to stay close to Princeton and immerse himself in processing ideas with colleagues.

In the late 1940s, Einstein became a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), seeing the parallels between the treatment of Jews in Germany and Black people in the United States. He corresponded with scholar and activist W.E.B. Du Bois as well as performer Paul Robeson and campaigned for civil rights, calling racism a “disease” in a 1946 Lincoln University speech.

Einstein was very particular about his sleep schedule, claiming he needed 10 hours of sleep per day to function well. His theory of relativity allegedly came to him in a dream about cows being electrocuted. He was also known to take regular naps. He is said to have held objects like a spoon or pencil in his hand while falling asleep. That way, he could wake up before hitting the second stage of sleep—a hypnagogic process believed to boost creativity and capture sleep-inspired ideas.

Although sleep was important to Einstein, socks were not. He was famous for refusing to wear them. According to a letter he wrote to future wife Elsa, he stopped wearing them because he was annoyed by his big toe pushing through the material and creating a hole.

One of the most recognizable photos of the 20 th century shows Einstein sticking out his tongue while leaving his 72 nd birthday party on March 14, 1951.

According to Discovery.com , Einstein was leaving his party at Princeton when a swarm of reporters and photographers approached and asked him to smile. Tired from doing so all night, he refused and rebelliously stuck his tongue out at the crowd for a moment before turning away. UPI photographer Arthur Sasse captured the shot.

Einstein was amused by the picture and ordered several prints to give to his friends. He also signed a copy of the photo that sold for $125,000 at a 2017 auction.

Einstein died on April 18, 1955, at age 76 at the University Medical Center at Princeton. The previous day, while working on a speech to honor Israel’s seventh anniversary, Einstein suffered an abdominal aortic aneurysm.

He was taken to the hospital for treatment but refused surgery, believing that he had lived his life and was content to accept his fate. “I want to go when I want,” he stated at the time. “It is tasteless to prolong life artificially. I have done my share, it is time to go. I will do it elegantly.”

According to the BBC, Einstein muttered a few words in German at the moment of his death. However, the nurse on duty didn’t speak German so their translation was lost forever.

In a 2014 interview , Life magazine photographer Ralph Morse said the hospital was swarmed by journalists, photographers, and onlookers once word of Einstein’s death spread. Morse decided to travel to Einstein’s office at the Institute for Advanced Studies, offering the superintendent alcohol to gain access. He was able to photograph the office just as Einstein left it.

After an autopsy, Einstein’s corpse was moved to a Princeton funeral home later that afternoon and then taken to Trenton, New Jersey, for a cremation ceremony. Morse said he was the only photographer present for the cremation, but Life managing editor Ed Thompson decided not to publish an exclusive story at the request of Einstein’s son Hans.

During Einstein’s autopsy, pathologist Thomas Stoltz Harvey had removed his brain, reportedly without his family’s consent, for preservation and future study by doctors of neuroscience.

However, during his life, Einstein participated in brain studies, and at least one biography claimed he hoped researchers would study his brain after he died. Einstein’s brain is now located at the Princeton University Medical Center. In keeping with his wishes, the rest of his body was cremated and the ashes scattered in a secret location.

In 1999, Canadian scientists who were studying Einstein’s brain found that his inferior parietal lobe, the area that processes spatial relationships, 3D-visualization, and mathematical thought, was 15 percent wider than in people who possess normal intelligence. According to The New York Times , the researchers believe it might help explain why Einstein was so intelligent.

In 2011, the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia received thin slices of Einstein’s brain from Dr. Lucy Rorke-Adams, a neuropathologist at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and put them on display. Rorke-Adams said she received the brain slides from Harvey.

Since Einstein’s death, a veritable mountain of books have been written on the iconic thinker’s life, including Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson and Einstein: A Biography by Jürgen Neffe, both from 2007. Einstein’s own words are presented in the collection The World As I See It .

Einstein has also been portrayed on screen. Michael Emil played a character called “The Professor,” clearly based on Einstein, in the 1985 film Insignificance —in which alternate versions of Einstein, Marilyn Monroe , Joe DiMaggio , and Joseph McCarthy cross paths in a New York City hotel.

Walter Matthau portrayed Einstein in the fictional 1994 comedy I.Q. , in which he plays matchmaker for his niece played by Meg Ryan . Einstein was also a character in the obscure comedy films I Killed Einstein, Gentlemen (1970) and Young Einstein (1988).

A much more historically accurate depiction of Einstein came in 2017, when he was the subject of the first season of Genius , a 10-part scripted miniseries by National Geographic. Johnny Flynn played a younger version of the scientist, while Geoffrey Rush portrayed Einstein in his later years after he had fled Germany. Ron Howard was the director.

Tom Conti plays Einstein in the 2023 biopic Oppenheimer , directed by Christopher Nolan and starring Cillian Murphy as scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer during his involvement with the Manhattan Project.

• The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.
• A question that sometimes drives me hazy: Am I or are the others crazy?
• A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.
• Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.
• I want to go when I want. It is tasteless to prolong life artificially. I have done my share, it is time to go. I will do it elegantly.
• If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.
• Nature shows us only the tail of the lion. But there is no doubt in my mind that the lion belongs with it even if he cannot reveal himself to the eye all at once because of his huge dimension. We see him only the way a louse sitting upon him would.
• [T]he distinction between past, present, and future is only an illusion, however persistent.
• Living in this “great age,” it is hard to understand that we belong to this mad, degenerate species, which imputes free will to itself. If only there were somewhere an island for the benevolent and the prudent! Then also I would want to be an ardent patriot.
• I, at any rate, am convinced that He [God] is not playing at dice.
• How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it.
• I regard class differences as contrary to justice and, in the last resort, based on force.
• I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves—this critical basis I call the ideal of a pigsty. The ideals that have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth.
• My political ideal is democracy. Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized. It is an irony of fate that I myself have been the recipient of excessive admiration and reverence from my fellow-beings, through no fault and no merit of my own.
• The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed.
• An autocratic system of coercion, in my opinion, soon degenerates. For force always attracts men of low morality, and I believe it to be an invariable rule that tyrants of genius are succeeded by scoundrels.
• My passionate interest in social justice and social responsibility has always stood in curious contrast to a marked lack of desire for direct association with men and women. I am a horse for single harness, not cut out for tandem or team work. I have never belonged wholeheartedly to country or state, to my circle of friends, or even to my own family.
• Everybody is a genius.

Fact Check: We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn’t look right, contact us !

The Biography.com staff is a team of people-obsessed and news-hungry editors with decades of collective experience. We have worked as daily newspaper reporters, major national magazine editors, and as editors-in-chief of regional media publications. Among our ranks are book authors and award-winning journalists. Our staff also works with freelance writers, researchers, and other contributors to produce the smart, compelling profiles and articles you see on our site. To meet the team, visit our About Us page: https://www.biography.com/about/a43602329/about-us

Tyler Piccotti first joined the Biography.com staff as an Associate News Editor in February 2023, and before that worked almost eight years as a newspaper reporter and copy editor. He is a graduate of Syracuse University. When he's not writing and researching his next story, you can find him at the nearest amusement park, catching the latest movie, or cheering on his favorite sports teams.

Nobel Prize Winners

Alice Munro

Chien-Shiung Wu

The Solar Eclipse That Made Albert Einstein a Star

14 Hispanic Women Who Have Made History

Marie Curie

Martin Luther King Jr.

Henry Kissinger

Malala Yousafzai

Jimmy Carter

10 Famous Poets Whose Enduring Works We Still Read

22 Famous Scientists You Should Know

Wole Soyinka

information Quotes

Recommended quote pages.

• Help Center
• B Board Book Club
• P Picture Book Club
• J Junior Chapter Book Club
• M Middle Grade Book Club
• Gift a Book Club
• B Book Registries
• Beautiful Collections
• C Classrooms
• B Book Fairs
• Schedule Demo

Book Platform

• Find a Book
• Reading App
• Community Editors

Authors & Illustrators

• Get Your Book Reviewed
• Submit Original Work

Follow Bookroo

Sep 2, 2024

10 inspiring quotes by Swami Vivekananda for working professionals

Swami vivekananda.

Born on January 12, 1863, as Narendranath Datta, Swami Vivekananda was an Indian Hindu monk, philosopher, religious teacher and author. His teachings have inspired many people worldwide and continue to do so even today. Here we list some of his quotes that will inspire you in life.

On working on yourself for success

"You have to grow from the inside out. None can teach you, none can make you spiritual. There is no other teacher but your own soul."

On having a growth mindset

"We are what our thoughts have made us; so take care about what you think. Words are secondary. Thoughts live; they travel far."

On hard work

"Arise! Awake! And stop not until the goal is reached."

On connecting with yourself

"Talk to yourself once in a day, otherwise you may miss meeting an intelligent person in this world."

On the secret to success

"Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life – think of it, dream of it, and live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, and every part of your body, be full of that idea and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success."

You may also like

On being fearless and taking up challenges.

“Be not afraid of anything. You will do marvelous work. It is fearlessness that brings heaven even in a moment.”

On facing problems

“In a day, when you don't come across any problems - you can be sure that you are travelling in the wrong path”

On doing the right thing

“In a conflict between the heart and the brain, follow your heart.”

On learning from life

“Take risks in your life, If you win, you can lead! If you lose, you can guide!"

On learning from others

"Learn everything that is good from others, but bring it in, and in your own way absorb it; do not become others."

Thanks For Reading!

Next: Ways to fall in love with your life

Stack Exchange Network

Stack Exchange network consists of 183 Q&A communities including Stack Overflow , the largest, most trusted online community for developers to learn, share their knowledge, and build their careers.

Q&A for work

Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search.

Citing speech and interviews in biographies

I am currently writing a biography of a band, and have a question regarding citing quotes, such as from interviews. Is it necessary to cite everything a person (for example a band member or manager) has said, from the original source of the speech?

The reason I ask is because an already published biography on a similar subject has quotes from people that are originally from interviews that were, for example, originally from the NME or newspaper interviews that I have located on the internet. The book has no acknowledgement (footnotes, bibliography) that these quotes are from other interviews/pieces. Is this because the author will have cleared the rights to use it with the original publisher, or are there different rules when citing speech?

Thank you very much for your time!

• non-fiction

• Tagged as mla because we're closing an earlier question as a dupe of this - and the currently most-upvoted answer here addresses this in MLA style. (Also see this closed question .) –  Goodbye Stack Exchange Commented Mar 28, 2012 at 15:37

2 Answers 2

This is called quoting from an indirect source.

And, yes, if you don't take your quotations from the original source, you need to acknowledge the intermediary. This is in part to recognize the work that person did, but also to protect yourself in case that person misquoted the original source.

I don't know the audience for your work, so I don't know which style you should use, but in MLA, for example, you write "qtd in" and then give the source. eg.

The star said he "couldn't care less about the little people." (qtd. in Smith 273).

If you're writing something less academic, you could just explain the situation in words. eg.

John Smith was the only one in the room after the show, and he reports that the star said he "couldn't care less about the little people."

Responsible writing requires that you make it clear where the information comes from, in the name of integrity and accuracy.

• Brilliant, thank you. I assume the author of the book I referred to would have sought permission to use the information. While he uses the 2nd technique you outlined a lot, there are some points (for example the quote he used un-cited that I found the original source for) that I presume he must have gained permission to use. Thanks! :) –  Ali Commented Aug 12, 2011 at 15:24
• |If it's a work of scholarship, you can't really 'get permission' to use something un-cited. You shouldn't want to.The citation is your way of showing that your information is legit. If I'm reading you correctly, and the book you're using has taken things word-for-word from another source and not acknowledged it, I would seriously question the legitimacy of the book you're using. It's sloppy scholarship, at the very least. –  Kate S. Commented Aug 12, 2011 at 15:30

I don't know if the rules for citing from speech are any different from those of citing from text, however, if you are to cite something or someone verbatim, you need to put it in quotes, if not also as a separate paragraph. In cases where the article/object of the quote is tacit, you may place it in square brackets as part of the quote. This also applies to conjunctive terms. For example, take the following phrase:

"Fred was seen leaving the crime scene. After hours of searching, he was arrested by police."

If only the second sentence of this phrase is relevant to your discussion, you may quote it as follows:

"After hours of searching, he [Fred] was arrested by police."

Note that you may also omit part of the quote that is not relevant to your discussion, so long as you don't take it out of its context, and so long as you replace it with ellipses. For example,

"Fred was seen leaving the crime scene...[but] was later arrested by police."

Notice how I also added a conjunctive term in square brackets in order to join the two sentences from the original quote.

Note that these rules apply only if you are citing from the original source. If, however, you are citing from a secondary source, you must paraphrase it as well as acknowledge the source where it came from. Using the above example, you may write:

"According to the Daily Telegraph, Fred was seen leaving the crime, but was later arrested by police."

And, if publishing this in a (scientific) paper, for example, you will most likely need to reference the bibliography entry of your source.

Your Answer

Reminder: Answers generated by artificial intelligence tools are not allowed on Writing Stack Exchange. Learn more

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest.

Required, but never shown

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge you have read our privacy policy .

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged non-fiction mla biography citations or ask your own question .

• Featured on Meta
• Bringing clarity to status tag usage on meta sites
• Announcing a change to the data-dump process

Hot Network Questions

• Is it possible to travel to USA with legal cannabis?
• How can I Align an existing Object to the 3D Viewport's XY Plane?
• How do I backup only changed files on an external hard drive?
• Best way to explain the thinking steps from x² = 9 to x=±3
• Identifications in differential geometry
• new versions of fancyhdr break caesar_book class
• If Starliner returns safely on autopilot, can this still prove that it's safe? Could it be launched back up to the ISS again to complete its mission?
• How can I write the following expression in LaTeX?
• Why is simpler prose more popular these days?
• Explain how π – 1 + 50 + ⅔ × 1000 is PLONK
• Find the radius of a circle given 2 of its coordinates and their angles.
• What does "if you ever get up this way" mean?
• Why 2 Senators per State?
• Converting pipe-separated file containing GeoJSON geometries to GeoJSON with ogr2ogr
• In 1982 Admiral Grace Hopper said "I still haven't found out why helicopter rotors go the way they do". If she were here today, how might one answer?
• A SF novel where a very poor girl finds a "talking book" meant for daughters of extremely rich people
• How can coordinates be meaningless in General Relativity?
• Find and delete files from unix directory of multiple patterns
• A classic problem about matrix
• Looking for a sci-fi book I read back in high school in the 1980's. I think it was written early 1980's or even in the 1970's
• What is Zion's depth in the Matrix?
• Did Gandalf know he was a Maia?
• Could there be a runaway thermonuclear fusion in ocean of heavy water?
• Is it true that the yetzer hara for honor never goes away?

• Skip to main content
• Skip to primary sidebar

• Save Recipes!
• All Main Courses
• Latest Recipes
• Recipe Index

Weekly Meal Plan (for September 2-8, 2024) + Life Update

Published: Sep 02, 2024 / 14 Comments

• Pinterest 58
• Facebook 32

Hello, friends and fellow home cooks!

This is my weekly newsletter (it's one day late), which includes 7 weeknight meals + 3 healthy salads (for the week of September 2-8, 2024), and a brief life update.

7 weeknight meals + 3 healthy salads

DAY 1: Creamy Chicken Pasta with Green Beans and Bacon

DAY 2: Mexican Street Corn and Shrimp (30 Minutes, One-Pan)

DAY 3: Greek Salmon Salad with Spinach, Tomatoes, Olives, Feta, and Lemon Balsamic Dressing

DAY 4: Pan-Seared Flank Steak with Creamy Sun-Dried Tomato and Spinach Orzo (30 Minutes, One-Pan)

DAY 5: Stuffed Spaghetti Squash with Broccoli, Sausage, and Cheddar Cheese

DAY 6: Chicken with Apricots and Honey-Lime Sauce (30-Minute, One-Pan Meal). You can use peaches, nectarines, plums, or apples instead of apricots. Or, soak dried apricots briefly in a pot of boiling water to plump them up, drain them well, and slice them up.

DAY 7: Ham Spaghetti Pasta with Spinach, Burrata Cheese, Crushed Pistachios, and Lemon Butter Sauce . It's a great recipe for lunch ham meat or any packaged sliced ham. You can also use fresh Mozzarella cheese (soft balls or a sliced log) instead of Burrata.

SALAD 1: Arugula Salad with Apples, Dried Cranberries, Pecans, and Balsamic Dressing

SALAD 2: Beet and Apple Salad with Mixed Greens, Pecans, Blue Cheese, and homemade Honey-Lemon Mustard Dressing . Perfect for roasted, boiled, marinated, or pickled beets!

SALAD 3: Strawberry Orange Salad with Spinach, Arugula, Toasted Sliced Almonds, and Feta Cheese

LIFE UPDATE

It's been a bit of a hectic week, and I've been in constant catch-up mode, having to solve many problems and handle numerous tedious tasks and minutiae. On top of that, I've had more doctor's appointments in the last 30 days than I'd like. I was unexpectedly diagnosed with severe anemia , so serious that it needs immediate attention, and it cannot be put on a back burner.

My July lab results were alarming, with nearly all of my red blood cell metrics flagged with High Alert notifications. For example, my Ferritin 5 ng/mL (normal range should be 15-150), Iron 12 ug/dL (normal range should be 17-159) , Iron Saturation 3% (normal range should be 15-55%), Hemoglobin 7.7 g/dL (normal range is 11.1 - 15.9). Anemia is typically categorized as mild, moderate, or severe. Unfortunately, all my numbers fall into the "severe" category, which explains why my doctor kept persistently trying to reach me on the phone in the last 3 weeks.

Living at 9,000 feet, my red blood cell count should be high (as it usually has been), but right now, I'm operating with the bare minimum. In fact, my red blood cell count is currently much lower than it should be, even for someone at sea level. My iron absorption is almost nonexistent at 3% (compared to the normal 50%), leading to dangerously low hemoglobin levels. This means there's hardly any oxygen being carried through my blood to my lungs, muscles, and other vital organs. It all makes sense now—I've been consistently 20 minutes slower on my usual hikes and couldn't push myself harder without nearly passing out. This has been happening for a year and a half now. My initial instinct was to ignore all of this for a while with the hope that the anemia resolves itself on its own since I have so much on my plate right now and so much to catch up on. But then I realized that would be foolish—it could actually be life-threatening. So, I’ve started taking it seriously by taking supplements, eating plenty of red meat, and regularly incorporating chicken liver, beets, Vitamin C into my diet to boost my iron levels.

Unfortunately, because of all that hecticness, I got thrown off my usual routines, which I always find frustrating.

On a brighter note, even though I've been bogged down with many tedious tasks and dealing with my anemia that showed up out of nowhere, I'm happy to say I'm finally catching up. I've started filming new recipes and have already photographed four new amazing recipes with red meat, with plans to do many more this week. And, of course, I've made sure to get outside and hike three times a week—that always helps me stay grounded.

I wish everybody a great week filled with delicious food, fun conversations at the dinner table, good mood, energy, and happiness. Be healthy, and do a complete CBC blood test at least once a year!

Reader Interactions

Submit your question or provide a review of the recipe + star rating right here. cancel reply.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

September 02, 2024 at 12:21 pm

Why is your site Blocked?! Every single link in your newsletter led me to a firewall warning.

September 03, 2024 at 2:23 am

Hi Robert, I am trying to figure out what's happening. The issue seems limited only to my e-mail subscribers.

September 02, 2024 at 11:03 am

All recipes in your email are blocked. Can’t open any of them.

September 03, 2024 at 2:25 am

Hi Jennifer, I think this problem is resolved now, but I am monitoring this situation.

September 02, 2024 at 10:29 am

FYI, I could not get to your newsletter via the e-mail link - I get an "access denied, sucuri website firewall" message. Looks like it's something on your end. I could only see your newsletter by going directly to your site.

September 03, 2024 at 2:27 am

Hi, Heidi. At first, it seemed like a short-lived glitch, but I kept receiving these complaints, so I submitted support tickets to the involved tech companies to resolve this issue.

September 02, 2024 at 9:57 am

I am unable to access recipes from the e-mail - a firewall page pops up??

September 03, 2024 at 2:28 am

It's some glitch we're trying to figure out. It seems to affect only my e-mail list.

September 02, 2024 at 8:53 am

Take good care of yourself, Julia! I LOVE your recipes and I'm looking forward to new ones with red meat!!!

Thank you for your kind wishes, Judy! I have already cooked 5 delicious recipes with red meat - will post on the website this week and next week.

September 02, 2024 at 7:42 am

All the links in the email come up to an “Access denied” page. I can take a screenshot if you’d like me to. Are other people having issues? I was only able to access your site directly, not via e-mail

September 03, 2024 at 2:30 am

Pat, I am aware of this issue and working to fix it. Yes, many others who received my newsletter yesterday, on Monday, have e-mailed me about the same issue.

September 02, 2024 at 7:35 am

A problem! Your firewall won't allow access to recipes! Please fix this.

We're working to fix it, Anna!

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Migrants in N.Y. Shelters Face Surprising Challenge: Getting Their Mail

Mail delivery has become a complicated endeavor at hotels and other places converted into shelters, with important documents getting lost or delayed.

By Luis Ferré-Sadurní

With 64,000 migrants shuttling through a warren of shelters in New York City, one of the city’s more difficult challenges is among the more unheralded: delivering the mail.

The influx of migrants from the southern border has brought a barrage of mail to the city’s more than 200 migrant shelters, overflowing the makeshift mail rooms in repurposed hotels and office buildings where the new arrivals are staying.

Some of the correspondence is critical: immigration notices or documents to apply for Social Security numbers and work authorization, documents that, if lost or delayed, would hamper the migrants’ ability to work legally in the United States.

But problems have arisen . Mail sometimes goes missing. The Postal Service has, at times, determined that mail is undeliverable at some shelters, such as the tent dormitory on Randall’s Island, according to immigration lawyers.

And with the city adopting a stricter policy that forces migrants to reapply for shelter, sometimes as often as every 30 days , migrants said they have struggled to find their mail.

Ever since New York City set up a multibillion-dollar emergency response to shelter and feed thousands of migrants two summers ago, officials have insisted that the way out of the crisis is to make migrants self-sufficient.

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and  log into  your Times account, or  subscribe  for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber?  Log in .

Want all of The Times?  Subscribe .