Marshall McLuhan Quotes

As quoted in Go Green : How to Build an Earth-Friendly Community (2008) by Nancy H. Taylor, p. 59 - View Quote Details on As quoted in Go Green : How to Build an Earth-Friendly…
Jobs are finished; role-playing has taken over; the job is a passe entity. The job belonged to the specialist. The kids know that they no longer live in a specialist world; you cannot have a goal today. You cannot say, “I’m going to start here and I’m going to work for the next three years and I’m going to go all that distance.” Every kid knows that within three years, everything will have changed including himself and the goal. (1971) - View Quote Details on Jobs are finished; role-playing has taken over; the job is…
The artist is the only person; his antennae pick up these messages before anybody. So he is always thought of as being way ahead of his time because he lives in the present. (1970) - View Quote Details on The artist is the only person; his antennae pick up…
I may be wrong, but I’m never in doubt. - View Quote Details on I may be wrong, but I’m never in doubt.
The Leonardo da Vinci of our time. - View Quote Details on The Leonardo da Vinci of our time.
Jacques Ellul observes in Propaganda: When dialogue begins, propaganda ends. His theme, that propaganda is not this or that ideology but rather the action and coexistence of all media at once, explains why propaganda is environmental and invisible. The total life of any culture tends to be “propaganda”, for this reason. It blankets perception and supresses awareness, making the counter environments created by the artist indispensable to survival and freedom. (p.77) - View Quote Details on Jacques Ellul observes in Propaganda: When dialogue begins, propaganda ends…
Moral indignation is a technique used to endow the idiot with dignity. (1967) - View Quote Details on Moral indignation is a technique used to endow the idiot…
I don’t pretend to understand my stuff. After all, my writing is very difficult. - View Quote Details on I don’t pretend to understand my stuff. After all, my…
I don’t necessarily agree with everything I say. - View Quote Details on I don’t necessarily agree with everything I say.
There is absolutely no inevitability, so long as there is a willingness to contemplate what is happening. - View Quote Details on There is absolutely no inevitability, so long as there is…
Environments work us over and remake us. It is man who is the content of and the message of the media, which are extensions of himself. Electronic man must know the effects of the world he has made above all things. (p.90) - View Quote Details on Environments work us over and remake us. It is man…
We are the genitals of our technology. We exist only to improve next years model. - View Quote Details on We are the genitals of our technology. We exist only…
When this circuit learns your job, what are you going to do? - View Quote Details on When this circuit learns your job, what are you going…
The new overkill is simply an extension of our nervous system into a total ecological service environment. Such a service environment can liquidate or terminate its beneficiaries as naturally as it sustains them. (p.152) - View Quote Details on The new overkill is simply an extension of our nervous…
The name of a man is a numbing blow from which he never recovers. - View Quote Details on The name of a man is a numbing blow from…
Perhaps the most precious possession of man is his abiding awareness of the Analogy of Proper Proportionality, the key to all metaphysical insight, and perhaps the very condition of consciousness itself. This analogical awareness is constituted of a perpetual play of ratios among ratios. A is to B, what C is to D, which is to say the ratio between A and B, is proportionable to the ratio between C and D, there being a ratio between these ratios, as well, this lively awareness of the most exquisite delicacy depends upon there being no connection whatsoever between the components. If A were linked to B, or C to D, mere logic would take the place of analogical perception, thus one of the penalties paid for literacy and a high visual culture is a strong tendency to encounter all things through a rigorous storyline, as it were. Paradoxically, connected spaces and situations exclude participation, whereas discontinuity affords room for involvement. Visual space is connected and creates detachment or non-involvement. It also tends to exclude the participation of the other senses. (p.240) - View Quote Details on Perhaps the most precious possession of man is his abiding…
Electrically speaking, there’s nothing but nuzzling and cuddling and cooing, alternating with wild yells for love and food and help. It’s always May Day in the global nursery. (1974) - View Quote Details on Electrically speaking, there’s nothing but nuzzling and cuddling and cooing,…
Anyone who tries to make a distinction between education and entertainment doesn’t know the first thing about either - View Quote Details on Anyone who tries to make a distinction between education and…
The new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a global village. - View Quote Details on The new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image…
Money is the poor man’s credit card. (1964) - View Quote Details on Money is the poor man’s credit card. (1964)
Since Sputnik and the satellites, the planet is enclosed in a manmade environment that ends “Nature” and turns the globe into a repertory theater to be programmed. Shakespeare at the Globe mentioning “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players” (As You Like It, Act II, Scene 7) has been justified by recent events in ways that would have struck him as entirely paradoxical. The results of living inside a proscenium arch of satellites is that the young now accept the public spaces of the earth as role-playing areas. Sensing this, they adopt costumes and roles and are ready to “do their thing” everywhere.” (p.9-10) - View Quote Details on Since Sputnik and the satellites, the planet is enclosed in…
Radio provides a speed-up of information that also causes acceleration in other media. It certainly contracts the world to village size and creates insatiable village tastes for gossip, rumor, and personal malice. (1964) - View Quote Details on Radio provides a speed-up of information that also causes acceleration…
As we transfer our whole being to the data bank, privacy will become a ghost or echo of its former self and what remains of community will disappear. (1980) - View Quote Details on As we transfer our whole being to the data bank,…
Another theme of the Wake that helps in the understanding of the paradoxical shift from cliché to archetype is “pastimes are past times”. The dominant technologies of one age become the games and pastimes of a later age. In the twentieth century the number of past times that are simultaneously available is so vast as to create cultural anarchy. When all the cultures of the world are simultaneously present, the work of the artist in the elucidation of form takes on new scope and new urgency. Most men are pushed into the artist role. The artist cannot dispense with the principle of doubleness and interplay since this kind of hendiadys-dialogue is essential to the very structure of consciousness, awareness, and autonomy. (p.99) - View Quote Details on Another theme of the Wake that helps in the understanding…
Violence, whether spiritual or physical, is a quest for identity and the meaningful. The less identity, the more violence. (1976) - View Quote Details on Violence, whether spiritual or physical, is a quest for identity…
First Man made the hammer, then the hammer made the Man. - View Quote Details on First Man made the hammer, then the hammer made the…
There are no remote places. Under instant circuitry, nothing is remote in time or in space. It’s now. (1965) - View Quote Details on There are no remote places. Under instant circuitry, nothing is…
Only puny secrets need protection. Big discoveries are protected by public incredulity. (p.92) - View Quote Details on Only puny secrets need protection. Big discoveries are protected by…
The medium is the message. - View Quote Details on The medium is the message.
Societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate than by the content of the communication. (1967) - View Quote Details on Societies have always been shaped more by the nature of…
Hypnotized by their rear-view mirrors, philosophers and scientists alike tried to focus the figure of man in the old ground of nineteenth-century industrial mechanism and congestion. They failed to bridge from the old figure to the new. It is man who has become both figure and ground via the electrotechnical extension of his awareness. With the extension of his nervous system as a total information environment, man bridges art and nature. (p.11) - View Quote Details on Hypnotized by their rear-view mirrors, philosophers and scientists alike tried…
If it works, it’s obsolete. - View Quote Details on If it works, it’s obsolete.
It’s misleading to suppose there’s any basic difference between education & entertainment. This distinction merely relieves people of the responsibility of looking into the matter. - View Quote Details on It’s misleading to suppose there’s any basic difference between education…
Disarmament is illogical and futile, unless one is prepared to regard the available means of production and social organization as affording unique social ends. To divert electrical energy and circuitry into atomic bombs shows the same imaginative power as wiring the dining-room chairs to enable one to electrocute the sitter in the event that he might prove hostile. It is part of the age-old habit of using new means for old purposes instead of discovering what are the new goals contained in the new means. (p.202) - View Quote Details on Disarmament is illogical and futile, unless one is prepared to…
The perfection of the means of communication has given [the] average power complex of the human being an enormous extension of expression. (1953) - View Quote Details on The perfection of the means of communication has given [the]…
The future masters of technology will have to be light-hearted and intelligent. The machine easily masters the grim and the dumb. (1969) - View Quote Details on The future masters of technology will have to be light-hearted…
Ads are the cave art of the twentieth century. - View Quote Details on Ads are the cave art of the twentieth century.