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Top 25 Erving Goffman Quotes (2025 Update)

Erving Goffman Quote: “Choose your self-presentations carefully, for what starts out as a mask may become your face.”

1. “Choose your self-presentations carefully, for what starts out as a mask may become your face.”

— Erving Goffman

Featured in: Identity Quotes

Erving Goffman Quote: “The normal and the stigmatized are not persons, but perspectives.”

2. “The normal and the stigmatized are not persons, but perspectives.”

— Erving Goffman

Erving Goffman Quote: “Stigma is a process by which the reaction of others spoils normal identity.”

3. “Stigma is a process by which the reaction of others spoils normal identity.”

— Erving Goffman

Erving Goffman Quote: “Society is an insane asylum ran by the inmates.”

4. “Society is an insane asylum ran by the inmates.”

— Erving Goffman

Erving Goffman Quote: “We are all just actors trying to control and manage our public image, we act based on how others might see us.”

5. “We are all just actors trying to control and manage our public image, we act based on how others might see us.”

— Erving Goffman

Erving Goffman Quote: “All the world is not, of course, a stage, but the crucial ways in which it isn’t are not easy to specify.”

6. “All the world is not, of course, a stage, but the crucial ways in which it isn’t are not easy to specify.”

— Erving Goffman

Erving Goffman Quote: “Any group of persons – prisoners, primitives, pilots, or patients – develop a life of their own that becomes meaningful, reasonable and normal once you get close to it.”

7. “Any group of persons – prisoners, primitives, pilots, or patients – develop a life of their own that becomes meaningful, reasonable and normal once you get close to it.”

— Erving Goffman

Erving Goffman Quote: “Our sense of being a person can come from being drawn into a wide social unit; our sense of selfhood can arise through the little ways in which we resist the pull. Our status is backed by the solid buildings of the world, while our sense of personal identity often resides in the cracks.”

8. “Our sense of being a person can come from being drawn into a wide social unit; our sense of selfhood can arise through the little ways in which we resist the pull. Our status is backed by the solid buildings of the world, while our sense of personal identity often resides in the cracks.”

— Erving Goffman

Erving Goffman Quote: “Society is organized on the principle that any individual who possesses certain social characteristics has a moral right to expect that others will value and treat him in an appropriate way.”

9. “Society is organized on the principle that any individual who possesses certain social characteristics has a moral right to expect that others will value and treat him in an appropriate way.”

— Erving Goffman

Erving Goffman Quote: “And to the degree that the individual maintains a show before others that he himself does not believe, he can come to experience a special kind of alienation from self and a special kind of wariness of others.”

10. “And to the degree that the individual maintains a show before others that he himself does not believe, he can come to experience a special kind of alienation from self and a special kind of wariness of others.”

— Erving Goffman

Erving Goffman Quote: “The world, in truth, is a wedding.”

11. “The world, in truth, is a wedding.”

— Erving Goffman

Erving Goffman Quote: “Gender, not religion, is the opiate of the masses.”

12. “Gender, not religion, is the opiate of the masses.”

— Erving Goffman

Erving Goffman Quote: “Approved attributes and their relation to face make every man his own jailer; this is a fundamental social constraint even though each man may like his cell.”

13. “Approved attributes and their relation to face make every man his own jailer; this is a fundamental social constraint even though each man may like his cell.”

— Erving Goffman

Erving Goffman Quote: “The self, then, as a performed character, is not an organic thing that has a specific location, whose fundamental fate is to be born, to mature, and to die; it is a dramatic effect arising diffusely from a scene that is presented, and the characteristic issue, the crucial concern, is whether it will be credited or discredited.”

14. “The self, then, as a performed character, is not an organic thing that has a specific location, whose fundamental fate is to be born, to mature, and to die; it is a dramatic effect arising diffusely from a scene that is presented, and the characteristic issue, the crucial concern, is whether it will be credited or discredited.”

— Erving Goffman

Erving Goffman Quote: “Man is not like other animals in the ways that are really significant: Animals have instincts, we have taxes.”

15. “Man is not like other animals in the ways that are really significant: Animals have instincts, we have taxes.”

— Erving Goffman

Erving Goffman Quote: “So I ask that these papers be taken for what they merely are: exercises, trials, tryouts, a means of displaying possibilities, not establishing fact.”

16. “So I ask that these papers be taken for what they merely are: exercises, trials, tryouts, a means of displaying possibilities, not establishing fact.”

— Erving Goffman

Erving Goffman Quote: “The act of staring is a thing which one does not ordinarily do to another human being; it seems to put the object stared at in a class apart. One does not talk to a monkey in a zoo, or to a freak in a sideshow – one only stares.”

17. “The act of staring is a thing which one does not ordinarily do to another human being; it seems to put the object stared at in a class apart. One does not talk to a monkey in a zoo, or to a freak in a sideshow – one only stares.”

— Erving Goffman

Erving Goffman Quote: “By definition, of course, we believe the person with a stigma is not quite human. On this assumption we exercise varieties of discrimination, through which we effectively, if often unthinkingly, reduce his life chances. We construct a stigma-theory, an ideology to explain his inferiority and account for the danger he represents, sometimes rationalizing an animosity based on other differences, such as those of social class.”

18. “By definition, of course, we believe the person with a stigma is not quite human. On this assumption we exercise varieties of discrimination, through which we effectively, if often unthinkingly, reduce his life chances. We construct a stigma-theory, an ideology to explain his inferiority and account for the danger he represents, sometimes rationalizing an animosity based on other differences, such as those of social class.”

— Erving Goffman

Erving Goffman Quote: “And I always feel this with straight people – that whenever they’re being nice to me, pleasant to me, all the time really, underneath they’re only assessing me as a criminal and nothing else. It’s too late for me to be any different now to what I am, but I still feel this keenly, that that’s their only approach, and they’re quite incapable of accepting me as anything else.27.”

19. “And I always feel this with straight people – that whenever they’re being nice to me, pleasant to me, all the time really, underneath they’re only assessing me as a criminal and nothing else. It’s too late for me to be any different now to what I am, but I still feel this keenly, that that’s their only approach, and they’re quite incapable of accepting me as anything else.27.”

— Erving Goffman

Erving Goffman Quote: “When we allow that the individual projects a definition of the situation when he appears before others, we must also see that the others, however passive their role may seem to be, will themselves effectively project a definition of the situation by virtue of their response to the individual and by virtue of any lines of action they initiate to him.”

20. “When we allow that the individual projects a definition of the situation when he appears before others, we must also see that the others, however passive their role may seem to be, will themselves effectively project a definition of the situation by virtue of their response to the individual and by virtue of any lines of action they initiate to him.”

— Erving Goffman

Erving Goffman Quote: “There seems to be no agent more effective than another person in bringing a world for oneself alive, or, by a glance, a gesture, or a remark, shriveling up the reality in which one is lodged.”

21. “There seems to be no agent more effective than another person in bringing a world for oneself alive, or, by a glance, a gesture, or a remark, shriveling up the reality in which one is lodged.”

— Erving Goffman

Erving Goffman Quote: “We have then, a basic social coin. With awe on one side and shame on the other. The audience senses secret mysteries and powers behind the performance, and the performer senses that his chief secrets are petty ones. As countless folktales and initiation rites show, often the real secret behind the mystery is that there really is no mystery; the real problem is to prevent the audience from learning this too.”

22. “We have then, a basic social coin. With awe on one side and shame on the other. The audience senses secret mysteries and powers behind the performance, and the performer senses that his chief secrets are petty ones. As countless folktales and initiation rites show, often the real secret behind the mystery is that there really is no mystery; the real problem is to prevent the audience from learning this too.”

— Erving Goffman

Erving Goffman Quote: “Whether an honest performer wishes to convey the truth or whether a dishonest performer wishes to convey a falsehood, both must take care to enliven their performances with appropriate expressions, exclude from their performances expressions that might discredit the impression being fostered, and take care lest the audience impute unintended meanings.”

23. “Whether an honest performer wishes to convey the truth or whether a dishonest performer wishes to convey a falsehood, both must take care to enliven their performances with appropriate expressions, exclude from their performances expressions that might discredit the impression being fostered, and take care lest the audience impute unintended meanings.”

— Erving Goffman

Erving Goffman Quote: “The more there is about the individual that deviates in an undesirable direction from what might have been expected to be true of him, the more he is obliged to volunteer information about himself, even though the cost to him of candor may have increased proportionally.”

24. “The more there is about the individual that deviates in an undesirable direction from what might have been expected to be true of him, the more he is obliged to volunteer information about himself, even though the cost to him of candor may have increased proportionally.”

— Erving Goffman

Erving Goffman Quote: “For years the scar, harelip or misshapen nose has been looked on as a handicap, and its importance in the social and emotional adjustment is unconsciously all embracing. It is the “hook” on which the patient has hung all inadequacies, all dissatisfactions, all procrastinations and all unpleasant duties of social life, and he has come to depend on it not only as a reasonable escape from competition but as a protection from social responsibility.”

25. “For years the scar, harelip or misshapen nose has been looked on as a handicap, and its importance in the social and emotional adjustment is unconsciously all embracing. It is the “hook” on which the patient has hung all inadequacies, all dissatisfactions, all procrastinations and all unpleasant duties of social life, and he has come to depend on it not only as a reasonable escape from competition but as a protection from social responsibility.”

— Erving Goffman

Erving Goffman Quote: “Although the pictures shown here cannot be taken as representative of gender behavior in real life... one can probably make a significant negative statement about them, namely, that as pictures they are not perceived as peculiar and unnatural.”

26. “Although the pictures shown here cannot be taken as representative of gender behavior in real life... one can probably make a significant negative statement about them, namely, that as pictures they are not perceived as peculiar and unnatural.”

— Erving Goffman

Erving Goffman Quote: “Morning and lunchtime are times when anyone can appear alone almost anywhere without this giving evidence of how the person is faring in the social world; dinner and other evening activities, however, provide unfavorable information about unaccompanied participants, especially damaging in the case of female participants.”

27. “Morning and lunchtime are times when anyone can appear alone almost anywhere without this giving evidence of how the person is faring in the social world; dinner and other evening activities, however, provide unfavorable information about unaccompanied participants, especially damaging in the case of female participants.”

— Erving Goffman

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