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Marshall McLuhan Quotes

1911–1980 Canada

Herbert Marshall McLuhan (21 July 1911 – 31 December 1980) was a Canadian philosopher, futurist, and communications theorist.

Canada
Academics
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Historians
Philosophers

Also known as: McLuhan, Marshall, Mcluhan

Random Marshall McLuhan quote

348 quotes

Headlines are icons, not literature. (p. 5)

Counterblast (1969)

To the blind all things are sudden. (p. 41)

Counterblast (1969)

The press is a group confessional form that provides communal participation. The book is a private confessional form that provides a “point of view.” (p. 204)

Understanding Media (1964)

Logic is figure without a ground. (p. 241)

The Book of Probes : Marshall McLuhan (2011)

Language is a sense, like touch. (p. 271)

The Book of Probes : Marshall McLuhan (2011)

Electric technology is directly related to our central nervous systems, so it is ridiculous to talk of "what the public wants" played over its own nerves. (p. 68)

Understanding Media (1964)

The city no longer exists except as a cultural ghost for tourists. Any highway eatery with its TV set, newspaper and magazine is as cosmopolitan as New York or Paris. (p.12)

Counterblast (1969)

The hot radio medium used in cool or nonliterate cultures has a violent effect, quite unlike its effect, say in England or America, where radio is felt as entertainment. (p. 30)

Understanding Media (1964)

The increase of visual stress among the Greeks alienated them from the primitive art that the electronic age now reinvents after interiorizing the “unified field” of electric all-at-onceness. (p. 72)

The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962)

Computers can do better than ever what needn’t be done at all. Making sense is still a human monopoly. (p. 109)

Take Today : The Executive as Dropout (1972)

The more you make people alike, the more competition you have. Competition is based on the principle of conformity. (p. 135)

The Book of Probes : Marshall McLuhan (2011)

Mysticism is just tomorrow’s science dreamed today.

Playboy Interview (1969)

All of the new media have enriched our perceptions of language and older media. They are to the man-made environment what species are to biology. (p. 84)

Counterblast (1969)

Every process pushed far enough tends to reverse or flip suddenly. Chiasmus – the reversal to process caused by increasing its speed, scope or size. (p. 6)

Take Today : The Executive as Dropout (1972)

Boyoboy oboyoboy oboyoboyoboyoboyoboyoboy...

The coverage is the war. If there were no coverage, there'd be no war. Yes, the newsmen and the mediamen around the world are actually the fighters, not the soldiers anymore.

Forces interview (1973)

When the evolutionary process shifts from biology to software technology the body becomes the old hardware environment. The human body is now a probe, a laboratory for experiments. (p. 180)

Culture Is Our Business (1970)

We are numb in our new electric world as the native involved in our literate and mechanical culture. (p. 16)

Understanding Media (1964)

We are as numb in our new electric world as the native involved in our literate and mechanical culture. (p. 9)

Understanding Media (1964)

Cervantes confronted typographic man in the figure of Don Quixote. (p. 242)

The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Marshall McLuhan (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.