Any group of persons β prisoners, primitives, pilots, or patients β develop a life of their own that becomes meaningful, reasonable and normal once you get close to it.
Erving GoffmanRead
The world, in truth, is a wedding.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that life is filled with connections, commitments, and social interactions akin to a wedding ceremony.
Erving Goffman's quote, 'The world, in truth, is a wedding,' implies that life is an intricate web of social relationships and interactions where individuals come together to experience commitment, connection, and celebration. Just like a wedding symbolizes the union of two individuals, the world reflects the continuous joining of lives through various relationships, underscoring the importance of social bonds and community in human experiences.
Themes
WeddingRelationshipsCommitmentConnectionSocial
In practice
Example use cases
During a toast at a wedding reception, one might reference this quote to celebrate the union of the couple.
More from Erving Goffman
All quotes βAnd 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 GoffmanRead
When a stranger comes into our presence, then, first appearances are likely to enable us to anticipate his category and attributes, his 'social identity' - to use a term that is better than 'social status' because personal attributes such as 'honesty' are involved, as well as structural ones, like 'occupation.'
Erving GoffmanRead
I assume that the proper study of interaction is not the individual and his psychology, but rather the syntactical relations among the acts of different persons mutually present to another.
Erving GoffmanRead
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 GoffmanRead
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.
Erving GoffmanRead
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