Perhaps the individual is so viable a god because he can actually understand the ceremonial significance of the way he is treated, and quite on his o…

- Erving Goffman

The self... is not an organic thing that has a specific location, whose fundamental fate is to be born, to mature, to die; it is a dramatic effect ar…

- Erving Goffman

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 al…

- Erving Goffman

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

- Erving Goffman

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

- Erving Goffman

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

- Erving Goffman

A performer may be taken in by his own act, convinced at the moment that the impression of reality which he fosters is the one and only reality. In s…

- Erving Goffman

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, shrivel…

- Erving Goffman

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 re…

- Erving Goffman