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.

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

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.

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

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

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

Society is organized on the principle that any individual who possesses certain social characteristics has a moral right to expect that others will value and treat him in an appropriate way.

Society is an insane asylum ran by the inmates.

Any group of persons – prisoners, primitives, pilots, or patients – develop a life of their own that becomes meaningful, reasonable and normal once you get close to it.

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.

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

Someone may have a broken heart or someone may have a broken ego. Such people will have to suffer tremendously because of that.

You cut yourself off from all sorts of experience because you tell yourself you re not 'that sort of person

Here's to our beloved George Washington, the Joshua of America, who commanded the sun and the moon to stand still - and they obeyed.

Fortune turns all things to the advantage of those on whom she smiles.

Whether it's 18 years old or 40 years old, we think we know what's going on. But if you're lucky enough to continue the journey, its amazing how we keep learning how much we didn't know.

This world is gradually becoming a place Where I do not care to be any more.

In randori we learn employ the principle of maximum efficiency even when we could easily overpower an opponent.

Accept that the moment you buy your latest iPad, iPhone, tablet, app or game it will be promptly followed by a vastly improved and sleeker looking version.

Man, you're no smarter than me. You're just a fancier kind of stupid.

A late lark twitters from the quiet skies.