A dictionary of Marshall McLuhan’s quotations

Compiled by William Kuhns
©2026 Marshall McLuhan Estate

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Found 13 quotes (11 duplicates hidden).
Modern advertising is more and more a substitute for the product. Because of its rich resources and means of sensuous solicitation, modern advertising can give you the effect of almost anything without your having to bother about having the thing at all.
The Medium is the Massage, (1967), p 95
Quote #131
Year: 1967
Chapter: Advertising
It is the overlayering of perspectives, the simultaneous use of two kinds of space which creates the shock of dislocation here. For if all art is a contrived trap for the attention, all art and all language are techniques for looking at one situation through another one.
“Culture without Literacy”, in Explorations #1, December (1953), p 121 reprinted in Essential McLuhan, (1995), p 307, additional reprint in Media Research Technology, Art and Communication (1997), p 131, and McLuhan Unbound #6, (2017)
Quote #263
Year: 1953
Chapters: Analogy | Art, Artists | Dropout | Language | Living Unity | McLuhanisms & Zingers
↪ Also at #256, #441, #3206, #4083
The Greek word for environment is perivallo -- to hit from all sides at once.
“The Reversal of the Overheated Image,” Playboy, Dec. 1968, p. 131.
Quote #2083
Year: 1968
Chapter: Environment
↪ Also at #2040
Sentimentality, like pornography, is fragmented emotion; a natural consequence of a high visual gradient in any culture.
“Through the vanish point”, p 131
Quote #2318
Chapter: Fragmentation
Even the highbrow arts of the twenties were “Jung and easily Freudened,” and moved enthusiastically toward retribalization of society. The famous family of Stein (Gert and Ep and Ein) presents a good cross section of the new tribalism created by the radio environment.
“Reversal of the Overheated Image” Playboy, December, 1968 , Vol. 15, No. 12, pp. 131-134, 245.
Quote #2326
Year: 1968
Chapters: Freud, Sigmund | Jung, Carl G | Retribalizing
↪ Also at #3180, #6189
Can all of these forms of visual experience now be by-passed by acoustic and discarnate man of the present electric world environment?
Liturgy And Media” in The Critic, Vol.31, No. 3, January-February (1973), p 23, reprinted in reprinted in The Medium and the Light: Reflections on Religion (1999), p 131
Quote #2368
Year: 1973
Chapters: From Tribal to Literate | Hardware / Software | Questions He Asks | Today’s Transition
↪ Also at #2566, #5923, #6861
Only those supremely sure of their identity can totally dispense with violence as a means to the ascertaining of identity. The Christian alone is potentially in such a position.
Contribution to Spectrum of Catholic Attitudes (1969), p 131
Quote #2844
Year: 1969
Chapter: Identity

Drawn to McLuhan #13

Split illustration: on the left, a man carefully works on an elaborate model train village built around a mountain; on the right, a man in a green coat boards a vintage passenger train at a busy station platform.
“…whereas verification [left hemisphere of the brain] asks: Did I build the system right? validation [both hemispheres, guided by the right hemisphere] asks, Did I build the right system?” Iain McGilchrist
Illustration of an elderly couple seated at a candlelit dinner table, surrounded by translucent, glowing blue figures made of binary code representing an extended family gathered for a feast.
“We have to invent a new concept of civilization in order to live at the speed of light.”
Split illustration: the top half shows two women rendered as glowing digital/binary-code figures typing on laptops and connected by a red stream of data across a black background; the bottom half shows the same two women as ordinary photorealistic figures typing on laptops against teal and orange backgrounds.
“We are converting ourselves into information processes.”
Cartoon of a distressed man clutching his head in a city street as dozens of speech bubbles, thought bubbles, and everyday objects all labeled "John" rain down around him.
“The name of a man is a numbing blow from which he never recovers.”
Photograph of a vintage black Ford Model T parked at a scenic hillside overlook, with a modern highway interchange and suburban town spread out in the valley below.
“It is the framework that changes with new technology, and not the picture within the frame.”
Sepia-toned illustration of a smartphone-headed figure in a top hat driving a horse-drawn carriage, with four hunched men in harness straps pulling it while staring down at their own phones.
"Circe only turned men into swine. Our problem is tougher."
Illustration of a colonial-era preacher in a wooden pulpit addressing a seated congregation, with a large speech bubble displaying bold printed text.
“Boldness of type created boldness of expression.”
Illustration of a weary older man using a paint roller to whitewash over a colorful carnival scene inside a large thought bubble, with paint drips falling below.
“At the speed of light the need to forget has become a form of nostalgia.”
Cartoon illustration of baseball players sitting in a dugout, staring in bewilderment as an older man in a golf visor and plaid pants walks past carrying a golf bag full of clubs.
“An assumption is an idea that has outlived its uselessness.”
Quote card combining photographic images of marble busts of Plato (hands covering his ears) and Aristotle (hands covering his eyes) beside a sepia photograph of Marshall McLuhan, with a speech bubble of quotation text above them.
“Why has no one in history -- not Plato, certainly not Aristotle, no philosopher, ever regarded our technologies grammatically, asking how they inflect on us?”
If our new media constitute so complete a range of expressiveness as both to enhance and almost to supplant speech itself, then we have moved into the period of post-literacy. If our present means of exploring and presenting the human past are such as to make simultaneously present all kinds of human pasts, then we have moved into the period of post-history.
Counterblast (1969), p 131
Quote #3530
Year: 1969
Chapters: History | Literacy
↪ Also at #2697
Let’s start with an “A” and see what we can do about it.
MM’s opening words to his first Monday Night Seminar in 1968, upon returning to Toronto from his year at Fordham, as reported by George Thompson, in MM: The Man and His Message (1989), p 131
Quote #4050
Year: 1968
Chapter: McLuhanisms & Zingers
[Thomas Gray’s “Elegy in a Country Churchyard”] walks backward into the future.
Through the Vanishing Point with Harley Parker (1968), p 131
Quote #4193
Year: 1968
Chapter: McLuhanisms & Zingers
Money is a poor man's credit card.
Understanding Media (1964), MIT/Routledge edition, p 131
Quote #4781
Year: 1964
Chapter: Money
An actor puts on his audience as a poet puts on his language. A stripper puts on her audience as she takes off her clothes.
Culture Is Our Business, (1970), p 131
Quote #5849
Year: 1970
Chapter: Putting On
The Romans invented the word sexus, probably deriving it from the Latin verb secare, to cut or sever. And that is exactly what civilization has done to man and woman. The cutting apart of the sexes rarely has been more drastic than in the industrial age of Europe and America, the period that was presaged by the invention of printing around 1460, and that is now changing into something new right before our eyes.
“The Future of Sex” with George Leonard (1967) in On the Nature Of Media (2016), p 131
Quote #6364
Year: 1967
Chapter: Sex and Love
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