Erving Goffman Quotes

You never know exactly how new policies are going to work. That doesn't mean you shouldn't try them.

Most of the time I've worked in labs if I didn't encounter something in a week entirely unexpected and surprising I'd consider it a lost week. Lots of that is due to mistakes and stupidity, but it could open a new line of inquiry. Something really good turns up once in a hundred times, but it makes the whole day worthwhile.

If you want to experiment, do something temporary.

Good and bad ideas both come from the same fountain of speculation and experiment.

I say most of my music is very trial-and-error.

I had no idea if 'No Roots' was going to work or not.

There's no use in asking what if. No one could ever give you the answers. I try, I really do, but it's hard for me to accept this way of thinking. I'm always wondering about the what-ifs, about the road not taken.

Through all the years of experimenting and research, I never once made a discovery. I start where the last man left off... All my work was deductive, and the results I achieved were those of invention pure and simple.

Every day you make mistakes. And the key to making mistakes is first you have to make them, which means you're in the game. So don't be afraid of getting in the game.

Accepting trial and error means accepting error. It means taking problems in our stride when a decision doesn't work out, whether through luck or misjudgment. And that is not something human brains seem to be able to do without a struggle.

Just because something didn't happen doesn't mean it isn't true.

There is no map, and charting a path ahead will not be easy. We will need to invent, which means we will need to experiment.

Science fiction, as I mentioned before, writes about what is neither impossible nor possible; the fact is that, when the question of possibility comes up in science fiction, the author can only reply that nobody knows. We haven't been there yet. We haven't discovered that yet. Science fiction hasn't happened.

That's already been tried before only means the first attempt got it wrong.

Round about what is, lies a whole mysterious world of might be, a psychological romance of possibilities and things that do not happen.

The right to err, which means the freedom to try experiments, is the universal condition of all progress.

The man who is striving to solve a problem defined by existing knowledge and technique is not, however, just looking around. He knows what he wants to achieve, and he designs his instruments and directs his thoughts accordingly. Unanticipated novelty, the new discovery, can emerge only to the extent that his anticipations about nature and his instruments prove wrong... There is no other effective way in which discoveries might be generated.

If you are not successful, that means you're not making enough mistakes.

To do something that you feel in your heart that's great, you need to make a lot of mistakes. Anything that's successful is a series of mistakes.

You can drastically increase your chances for success if you try lots of things and bring the best forward.

The Law of Probabilities: the more things you try, the more likely one of them will work.

By nature, I am an experimentalist. I don't believe much in accomplishment.

If you're not failing all the time, you're not creating a situation where you can get lucky.

I mean, accidents happen. You learn from them and you try to make sure they don't happen again.