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

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

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

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 own can respond dramatically to what is proffered him. In contacts between such deities there is no need for middlemen; each of these gods is able to serve as his own priest.

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

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 arising diffusely from a scene that is presented.

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.