
Top 97 Erving Quotes
#1. 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
#2. 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
#3. When handling the ball, I always would look for daylight, wherever there was daylight.
Julius Erving
#5. The first professional game that I ever played remains, to me, the most exciting moment of my professional career.
Julius Erving
#6. It's better to stay too long than to leave too soon.
Julius Erving
#7. 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
#8. If you've experienced having control, you don't want to be moved to a subordinate position, if you have your druthers.
Julius Erving
#9. 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
#10. 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
#12. Right up until the time I retired at age 37, I felt like there were still things that I could do better.
Julius Erving
#13. 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
#14. The biggest thing that I felt basketball could do for me was help me get a good education.
Julius Erving
#17. I demand more from myself than anybody could ever expect.
Julius Erving
#18. I demand more of myself than anyone else could ever expect.
Julius Erving
#19. 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
#20. If you don't do what's best for your body, you're the one who comes up on the short end.
Julius Erving
#21. 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
#23. 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
#24. To be great we need to win games we aren't supposed to win.
Julius Erving
#25. 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
#26. 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
#27. Teachers are sort of faced with a thankless task, because no matter how good they are, unless they find a way to personally rationalize the rewards of their effort, nobody else is really going to do it for them en masse.
Julius Erving
#28. I firmly believe that respect is a lot more important, and a lot greater, than popularity.
Julius Erving
#29. I live my life trying to never appear to be a small man.
Julius Erving
#30. 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
#31. 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
#32. 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
#33. I wanted to undertake the challenge of daring to be great.
Julius Erving
#34. 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
#35. I grabbed 19 rebounds in my first professional game, and somehow found a way to score 20 points. I felt real good about it. I felt that this was the beginning of something good.
Julius Erving
#36. I started playing professional basketball in 1971, and I played professionally for five seasons before going to Philadelphia.
Julius Erving
#37. 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
#38. If you get depressed about being the second-best team in the world, then you've got a problem.
Julius Erving
#39. One of the commitments that I personally have now is to a diverse approach to buying businesses, and the operation of those businesses.
Julius Erving
#40. Choose your self-presentations carefully, for what starts out as a mask may become your face.
Erving Goffman
#41. Because of the makeup of the NBA, it cannot afford for the public to turn on them.
Julius Erving
#42. 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
#43. And I continued to grow until I was 25 years old.
Julius Erving
#44. Fascination is a key to productivity; it unites experiences; it is even its own reward.
Erving Polster
#45. 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
#46. [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
#47. In 1981, at age 31, I was voted the best player in basketball, and the most valuable player in the league.
Julius Erving
#48. 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.
Erving Goffman
#51. When the crowd appreciates you, it encourages you to be a little more daring, I think.
Julius Erving
#52. We are all just actors trying to control and manage our public image, we act based on how others might see us.
Erving Goffman
#53. The normal and the stigmatized are not persons, but perspectives.
Erving Goffman
#54. With the crowds on your side, it's easier to play up to your potential.
Julius Erving
#55. I came from a broken home, so my mom was a major influence in my life.
Julius Erving
#56. Intuition knows what the mind can't see yet.
Maria Erving
#57. You know, just in terms of having to have a life on the road, you know, having the celebrity aspect be a burden for my family, friends and extended family.
Julius Erving
#58. I pulled the plug on it at a time that I thought was right for me to exit.
Julius Erving
#59. Gender, not religion, is the opiate of the masses.
Erving Goffman
#60. 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
#61. 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
#62. I keep both eyes on my man. The basket hasn't moved on me yet.
Julius Erving
#63. If it doesn't feel right, don't do it. Trust your intuition and don't ask "why", just say no.
Maria Erving
#64. Every team that I've played on, I've either been the captain or co-captain.
Julius Erving
#65. Your ideal life is your real life. Be true to yourself and honor your preferences.
Maria Erving
#66. 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
#67. To be an innovator, you can't be worried about making mistakes.
Julius Erving
#68. If you're not doing what is best for your body, you are the one who lose.
Julius Erving
#69. 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
#70. 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
#71. 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
#72. 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
#73. 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
#74. 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
#75. 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
#76. 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
#77. 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
#78. The key to success is to keep growing in all areas of life - mental, emotional, spiritual, as well as physical.
Julius Erving
#79. 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.
Erving Goffman
#80. 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
#81. I've always tried to tell myself that the work itself is the thing, that win, lose, or draw, the work is really what counts.
Julius Erving
#82. 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
#83. They are taking steps, but they are baby steps.
Julius Erving
#84. 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
#87. 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
#88. 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
#89. 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
#90. 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.
Erving Goffman
#91. Stigma is a process by which the reaction of others spoils normal identity.
Erving Goffman
#92. You can feel the vibes, feel the people pulling for you.
Julius Erving
#93. I always try to keep a pretty conservative demeanor on the court.
Julius Erving
#94. I had to spend countless hours, above and beyond the basic time, to try and perfect the fundamentals.
Julius Erving
#95. 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
#96. Man is not like other animals in the ways that are really significant: Animals have instincts, we have taxes.
Erving Goffman
#97. I think I was chosen by basketball, although I never really physically got drafted to any team that I played for.
Julius Erving
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