Erving Goffman Quotes

A man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognize him.

Tell me thy company, and I'll tell thee what thou art.

The imaginations which people have of one another are the solid facts of society.

There are no human beings whose sense of social identity is fully and exclusively given for themselves by the membership of the working (or any other) class

Extroverts never understand introverts, and it was like that in school days. I read recently that all of us can be defined in adult life by the way others perceived us in high school.

I hung out with the jocks. It doesn't mean I necessarily was one. I was just kind of there.

Social psychology has, as a rule, dealt with various phases of social experience from the psychological standpoint of individual experience.

In real life, I'm not super-posh but if that's the stereotype, I really don't care. It could be worse.

I went to a high school that didn't have many people in it. There were, like, 60 people in my senior class. There was a group of cool kids and a group of really dorky kids, and I was probably the coolest of the really dorky kids.

Personality and socialization aren't the same thing.

Some guys say beauty is only skin deep. But when you walk into a party, you don't see somebody's brain. The initial contact has to be the sniffing.

People see me as Andre first. Then they see me as someone who happens to be a Muslim.

For the better part of my adult life, I proudly avoided nerd/nimrod/goober status. I was always just cool enough.

I have met many people, and everyone's impression of me is based on my career.

Whether you want to admit it or not, people begin to judge you the minute you walk in the door.

I like the idea that people have formed their own opinions. And of course once people meet me or talk to me their opinion totally changes because I'm much more that girl that you hang out with than you think.

The first half of life is spent mainly in finding out who we are through seeing ourselves in our interaction with others.

It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.

People assume that I'm an aristocrat, but I don't really feel part of any class.

Eccentricity is usually owned by middle-class and upper-class people. If you are working class and eccentric, then you're just mad.

I distinctly remember being very young, sixth grade maybe, and being at a party and hearing the mothers discuss the children. And the mothers said, 'Well, it's very clear who's the leader in the group.' And they were talking about me!

I've been taught through life experience that, like, I'd better open my mouth and quickly define myself in a new space and with new people because, if I don't, I will be defined.

I think, in a lot of ways, we underestimate how much clothing plays a part in achieving our identities and in how we want the world to deal with us.

I think it's very hard to shake what people first think of you straightaway.

When I lived in England my perception of what people thought of me was largely formed by the media.