Erving Quotes & Sayings

I didn't want to become a reserve player, or a bench player, and it was time to move on and take on another challenge. — Julius Erving

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. We construct a stigma-theory, an ideology to explain his inferiority and account for the danger he represents, sometimes rationalizing an animosity based on other differences, such as those of social class. — Erving Goffman

That was just my own personal program: I didn't want to get too high over the good moments because I didn't want to be saddened and depressed when things didn't go as I had planned. — Julius Erving

At the same time, minor failings or incidental impropriety may, he feels, be interpreted as a direct expression of his stigmatized differentness. Ex-mental patients, for example, are sometimes afraid to engage in sharp interchanges with spouse or employer because of what a show of emotion might be taken as a sign of. Mental defectives face a similar contingency: It also happens that if a person of low intellectual ability gets into some sort of trouble the difficulty is more or less automatically attributed to "mental defect" whereas if a person of "normal intelligence" gets into a similar difficulty, it is not regarded as symptomatic of anything in particular.31 — Erving Goffman

I had to spend countless hours, above and beyond the basic time, to try and perfect the fundamentals. — Julius Erving

But you know, if you live an affluent lifestyle, there are all types of trappings that are there that you have to be cognizant of, and you've got to try and communicate freely and gain understanding about and then keep moving on, because you know, sometimes lifestyles are chosen for us as opposed to us choosing them. — Julius Erving

When I played, the owners had the power. The prisoners are running the prison now, not the warden. The warden is strong and he has say so but, the balance of power is definitely with the players. — Julius Erving

If you get depressed about being the second-best team in the world, then you've got a problem. — Julius Erving

Individuals are concerned not
with the moral issue of realizing these standards, but with
the amoral issue of engineering a convincing impression that
these standards are being realized. Our activity, then, is
largely concerned with moral matters, but as performers we
do not have a moral concern in these moral matters. As
performers we are merchants of morality. Our day is given
over to intimate contact with the goods we display and our
minds are filled with intimate understandings of them; but it
may well be that the more attention we give to these goods,
th e more d is ta n t we feel from them and from those who are
believing enough to buy them. To use a different imagery,
the very obligation and profitablility of appearing always in
a steady moral light, of being a socialized character, forces
us to be the sort of person who is practiced in the ways of
the stage. — Erving Goffman

There's the typical books, Moby Dick and, I guess in my adult life I began to read biographies more than fiction. I started to want to relate to other people's lives, things that had really happened. — Julius Erving

Being a typical Pisces, I might have experienced mood shifts, but I don't remember any depression, or needing to do anything, or to have someone bring me out of being depressed. — Julius Erving

If you're not doing what is best for your body, you are the one who lose. — Julius Erving

When I went to Philadelphia I was 26 years old and really sitting on top of the world. Family life, a professional career, plenty of friends and associates, and a good reputation, a wish list that could be the envy of many. — Julius Erving

But you know, we have a very normal family. We've had our ups and downs. You know, we've had our issues, but we've had great cause for celebration. — Julius Erving

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, shriveling up the reality in which one is lodged. — Erving Goffman

Theory and knowledge remain suspect, not because of inherent worthlessness, but because of their historic isolation from action. Without theoretical orientation, however, action is vulnerable to oversimplified and glib imitativeness-even mimicry-and to the use of the gimmick. — Erving Polster

If you do things with a certain type of result and cause a certain type of reaction or effect, then you increase your market value. It's very much a competition for the entertainment dollar, and that's never been more clearly evident than in today's NBA game. — Julius Erving

There is a relation between persons and role. But the relationship answers to the interactive system - to the frame - in which the role is performed and the self of the performer is glimpsed. Self, then, is not an entity half-concealed behind events, but a changeable formula for managing oneself during them. Just as the current situation prescribes the official guise behind which we will conceal ourselves, so it provides where and how we will show through, the culture itself prescribing what sort of entity we must believe ourselves to be in order to have something to show through in this manner. — Erving Goffman

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

For years the scar, harelip or misshapen nose has been looked on as a handicap, and its importance in the social and emotional adjustment is unconsciously all embracing. It is the "hook" on which the patient has hung all inadequacies, all dissatisfactions, all procrastinations and all unpleasant duties of social life, and he has come to depend on it not only as a reasonable escape from competition but as a protection from social responsibility. — Erving Goffman

If it doesn't feel right, don't do it. Trust your intuition and don't ask "why", just say no. — Maria Erving

Goals determine what your going to be — Julius Erving

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 alienation from self and a special kind of wariness of others. — Erving Goffman

I am very proud to be featured, especially when you consider the outstanding champions who have had this honor. It is great company to be in. — Julius Erving

We want to hear the story first and let the meaning unfold, rather than to be present with expectations of a certain significance into which all behavior is then fitted. — Erving Polster

In all of these various instances of stigma, however, including those the Greeks had in mind, the same sociological features are found: an individual who might have been received easily in ordinary social intercourse possesses a trait that can obtrude itself upon attention and turn those of us whom he meets away from him, breaking the claim that his other attributes have on us. He possesses a stigma, an undesired differentness from what we had anticipated. We and those who do not depart negatively from the particular expectations at issue I shall call the normals. — Erving Goffman

In our society, defecation involves an
individual in activity which is defined as inconsistent with
the cleanliness and purity standards expressed in many of our
performances. Such activity also causes the individual to
disarrange his clothing and to 'go out of play, that is, to
drop from his face the expressive mask that he employs in
face-to-face interaction. At the same time ic becomes difficult
for him to reassemble his personal front should the need to
enter into interaction suddenly occur. Perhaps that is a
reason why toilet doors in our society have locks on them. — Erving Goffman

The paradox is that, while a concern with past and future is obviously central to psychological functioning, to behave as though one were indeed in the past or future, as many do, pollutes the lively possibilities of existence. — Erving Polster

[On writing:] "There's a great quote by Julius Irving that went, 'Being a professional is doing the things you love to do, on the days you don't feel like doing them.'"
(One On 1, interview with Budd Mishkin; NY1, March 25, 2007.) — David Halberstam

The biggest thing that I felt basketball could do for me was help me get a good education. — Julius Erving

When I get a chance to power jump off both legs, I can lean, twist, change directions and decide whether to dunk the ball or pass it to an open man. In other words, I may be committed to the air, but I still have some control over it. — Julius Erving

I demand more from myself than anybody could ever expect. — Julius Erving

Enjoy that you can see me now. I would love to see the great Michael Jordan and Julius Erving in their younger days, but they're gone. Look at me at 50, I'm going to eat right and live right so I can take less punches and look normal. — Bernard Hopkins

The key to success is to keep growing in all areas of life - mental, emotional, spiritual, as well as physical. — Julius Erving

So I ask that these papers be taken for what they merely are: exercises, trials, tryouts, a means of displaying possibilities, not establishing fact. — Erving Goffman

I always try to keep a pretty conservative demeanor on the court. — Julius Erving

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

Because of the makeup of the NBA, it cannot afford for the public to turn on them. — Julius Erving

Daily life is a comprimised blend of posturing for the sake of role-playing and of varying degrees of self-revelation. Under stressful conditions even the "true" self cannot be precisely defined, as Erving Goffman observes ... Little wonder that the identity crisis is a major source of modern neuroticism , and that the urban middle class aches for a return to a simpler existence. — E. O. Wilson

If you don't do what's best for your body, you're the one who comes up on the short end. — Julius Erving

I keep both eyes on my man. The basket hasn't moved on me yet. — Julius Erving

I live my life trying to never appear to be a small man. — Julius Erving

When the crowd appreciates you, it encourages you to be a little more daring, I think. — Julius Erving

Therapy is too good to be limited to the sick. — Erving Polster

Given what the stigmatized individual may well face upon entering a mixed social situation, he may anticipatorily respond by defensive cowering. This may be illustrated from an early study of some German unemployed during the Depression, the words being those of a 43-year-old mason: How hard and humiliating it is to bear the name of an unemployed man. When I go out, I cast down my eyes because I feel myself wholly inferior. When I go along the street, it seems to me that I can't be compared with an average citizen, that everybody is pointing at me with his finger. I instinctively avoid meeting anyone. Former acquaintances and friends of better times are no longer so cordial. They greet me indifferently when we meet. They no longer offer me a cigarette and their eyes seem to say, "You are not worth it, you don't work."37 — Erving Goffman

A new question for the psychotherapist to ask is whether a theory can go beyond mere effectiveness in achieving either a so-called cure or even personal growth into its implications for the nature of an evolving society. — Erving Polster

My mom is one of 14 children. She's a great lady. She's a Taurus. Has been a profound influence in my life, still is to this day. Born in meager surroundings in rural South Carolina. — Julius Erving

And from the first time I picked up a basketball at age eight - I had a lot of difficulty when I first picked up a basketball, because I was a scrub - there were things that I liked about it. — Julius Erving

They are taking steps, but they are baby steps. — Julius Erving

The issue becomes not whether a person has experience with a stigma of his own, because he has, but rather how many varieties he has had his own experience with. — Erving Goffman

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

One of the things in the back of my mind is that, after my sports experience, I never want to be, totally consumed by any one endeavor, other than my family life. — Julius Erving

I demand more of myself than anyone else could ever expect. — Julius Erving

The ones who become stars or superstars are the ones who have a head on their shoulders and know how to use it. — Julius Erving

To be an innovator, you can't be worried about making mistakes. — Julius Erving

You can feel the vibes, feel the people pulling for you. — Julius Erving

LA Clippers should come to Louisville — Julius Erving

I think I started learning lessons about being a good person long before I ever knew what basketball was. And that starts in the home, it starts with the parental influence. — Julius Erving

When a person has swum, traveled, run a lathe, planted flowers, ridden a motorcycle, made wine, painted a picture, parachuted, he has increased the fund from which he may draw for new figural developments. In other words, as the background of his experience becomes more diversified, it also becomes potentially more harmonious with a whole range of happenings. — Erving Polster

The existence of a different value system among these persons is evinced by the communality of behavior which occurs when illiterates interact among themselves. Not only do they change from unexpressive and confused individuals, as they frequently appear in larger society, to expressive and understanding persons within their own group, but moreover they express themselves in institutional terms. Among themselves they have a universe of response. They form and recognize symbols of prestige and disgrace; evaluate relevant situations in terms of their own norms and in their own idiom: and in their interrelations with one another, the mask of accommodative adjustment drops. — Erving Goffman

I firmly believe that respect is a lot more important, and a lot greater, than popularity. — Julius Erving

I pulled the plug on it at a time that I thought was right for me to exit. — Julius Erving

Here I want to stress that perception of losing one's mind is based on culturally derived and socially ingrained stereotypes as to the significance of symptoms such as hearing voices, losing temporal and spatial orientation, and sensing that one is being followed, and that many of the most spectacular and convincing of these symptoms in some instances psychiatrically signify merely a temporary emotional upset in a stressful situation, however terrifying to the person at the time. Similarly, the anxiety consequent upon this perception of oneself, and the strategies devised to reduce this anxiety, are not a product of abnormal psychology, but would be exhibited by any person socialized into our culture who came to conceive of himself as someone losing his mind. — Erving Goffman

To be great we need to win games we aren't supposed to win. — Julius Erving

The stigmatized individual is asked to act so as to imply neither that his burden is heavy nor that bearing it has made him different from us; at the same time he must keep himself at that remove from us which assures our painlessly being able to confirm this belief about him. Put differently, he is advised to reciprocate naturally with an acceptance of himself and us, an acceptance of him that we have not quite extended to him in the first place. A PHANTOM ACCEPTANCE is thus allowed to provide the base for a PHANTOM NORMALCY. — Erving Goffman

When persons are present to one another they can function not merely as physical instruments but also as communicative ones. This possibility, no less than the physical one, is fateful for everyone concerned and in every society appears to come under strict normative regulation, giving rise to a kind of communication traffic order ... — Erving Goffman

Attitude is altitude. — Julius Erving

Every team that I've played on, I've either been the captain or co-captain. — Julius Erving

Fascination is a key to productivity; it unites experiences; it is even its own reward. — Erving Polster

I think that my God-given physical attributes, big hands, and big feet, the way that I'm built, proportion-wise, just made basketball the most inviting sport for me to play. — Julius Erving

If you've experienced having control, you don't want to be moved to a subordinate position, if you have your druthers. — Julius Erving

In reviewing his own moral career, the stigmatized individual may single out and retrospectively elaborate experiences which serve for him to account for his coming to the beliefs and practices that he now has regarding his own kind and normals. — Erving Goffman

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

Society is an insane asylum ran by the inmates. — Erving Goffman

When handling the ball, I always would look for daylight, wherever there was daylight. — Julius Erving

It's better to stay too long than to leave too soon. — Julius Erving

My role models in the business were the older guys on my team when I first got there: Gray Scott, Adrian Smith, Roland Taylor. These were the guys who took me under their wing, and really schooled me in terms of what the business was about. — Julius Erving

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 resist the pull. Our status is backed by the solid buildings of the world, while our sense of personal identity often resides in the cracks — Erving Goffman

We are all just actors trying to control and manage our public image, we act based on how others might see us. — Erving Goffman

One of the most predictable things in life is there will be change. You are better off if you can have a say in the change. But you are ignorant or naive if you don't think there will be change, whether you want it to or not. — Julius Erving

Being a professional," Julius Erving once said, "is doing the things you love to do, on the days you don't feel like doing them."16 — Daniel H. Pink

I came from a broken home, so my mom was a major influence in my life. — Julius Erving

Although the pictures shown here cannot be taken as representative of gender behavior in real life... one can probably make a significant negative statement about them, namely, that as pictures they are not perceived as peculiar and unnatural. — Erving Goffman

In a lot of areas of my life, particularly in my teenage years, I began to think about the world, and to think about the universe as being a part of my conscious everyday life. — Julius Erving

Goals determine what you're going to be. — Julius Erving

And I continued to grow until I was 25 years old. — Julius Erving

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 such cases we have a sense in which the performer comes to be his own audience; he comes to be performer and observer of the same show. Presumably he introcepts or incorporates the standards he attempts to maintain in the presence of others so that even in their absence his conscience requires him to act in a socially proper way. — Erving Goffman

So much of becoming a good athlete involves bringing other things to the table, other than physical skills. It involves intelligence, it involves many of the things that you learn during the process of being educated. How to analyze, how to assess, how to equate, how to reason. — Julius Erving

The model of "social order." Briefly, a social order may be defined as the consequence of any set of moral norms that regulates the way in which persons pursue objectives. — Erving Goffman

Gender, not religion, is the opiate of the masses. — Erving Goffman

Right up until the time I retired at age 37, I felt like there were still things that I could do better. — Julius Erving

I think I was chosen by basketball, although I never really physically got drafted to any team that I played for. — Julius Erving

I wanted to undertake the challenge of daring to be great. — Julius Erving

You know, we always tried to rationalize by saying you take the good, you take the upside, you got to deal with the downside, you've to take the downside. — Julius Erving

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

It is important to stress that, in America at least, no matter how small and how badly off a particular stigmatized category is, the viewpoint of its members is likely to be given public presentation of some kind. It can thus be said that Americans who are stigmatized tend to live in a literarily-defined world, however uncultured they might be. If they don't read books on the situation of persons like themselves, they at least read magazines and see movies; and where they don't do these, then they listen to local, vocal associates. An intellectually worked-up version of their point of view is thus available to most stigmatized persons. A comment is here required about those who come to serve as representatives of a stigmatized category. Starting out as someone who is a little more vocal, a little better known, or a little better connected than his fellow-sufferers, a stigmatized person may find that the "movement" has absorbed his whole day, and that he has become a professional. — Erving Goffman

When one removes this factor by surgical repair, the patient is cast adrift from the more or less acceptable emotional protection it has offered and soon he finds, to his surprise and discomfort, that life is not all smooth sailing even for those with unblemished, "ordinary" faces. He is unprepared to cope with this situation without the support of a "handicap," and he may turn to the less simple, but similar, protection of the behavior patterns of neurasthenia, hysterical conversion, hypochondriasis or the acute anxiety states.17 — Erving Goffman

I liked the game, I enjoyed the game, and the game fed me enough, and gave me enough rewards to reinforce that this is something that I should spend time doing, and that I could possibly make a priority in my life, versus other sports. — Julius Erving

I started playing professional basketball in 1971, and I played professionally for five seasons before going to Philadelphia. — Julius Erving

Goals determine what you are going to be — Julius Erving