A dictionary of Marshall McLuhan’s quotations

Compiled by William Kuhns
©2026 Marshall McLuhan Estate

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Found 4 quotes.
With TV, the smarter advertisers have made free with fur and fuzz, and blur and buzz.
Understanding Media, MIT/Routledge edition, (1964), p 233
Quote #128
Year: 1964
Chapter: Advertising
Being anti-Red made it impossible for [Americans] to read the message of Hitler. But their failure was as nothing compared to our present one. The American stake in literacy as a technology or uniformity applied to every level of education, government, industry, and social life is totally threatened by the electric technology.
Understanding Media, MIT/Routledge edition, (1964), p 17
Quote #233
Year: 1964
Chapter: America, North America
The right side of the group is fragmentary or left-brain in structure: synecdoche is part-whole quantifiable, irony 'splits' in another way. Irony splits figure from ground and splits the consciousness of the knowers.
Laws of Media: The New Science with Eric McLuhan, (1988), pp 232-233
Quote #2629
Year: 1988
Chapter: Hemispheres of the Brain
What is poetry? The essential qualities of poetry are economy or compactness, concereteness or “particularness,” and intensity… What makes poetry unique is that it exists in and through words; language is its medium, as movement is that of dance, sound that of music, and line and color that of painting… An ever-closer attention to words – to individual words – develops a feeling for language that makes possible the discovery of poetry and enable us to hear the voices of poetry.
The Voices of Literature, with Richard J. Schoeck (1964), p 233
Quote #5493
Year: 1964
Chapter: Poetry

Drawn to McLuhan #2

Two-panel comic illustration of a boxing match: a humanoid figure made of tumbling alphabet letters wearing "BRECE" shorts faces off against a muscular boxer with a smartphone for a head, under a "LITERACY VS ELECTRONIC" ring sign; in the second panel the smartphone boxer knocks the letter-man apart with a "K.O." punch.
“It may even prove to be the case that the entire tradition of phonetic writing, which is co-extensive with our Western world and the Graeco-Roman tradition, cannot sustain the electronic impact.”
Illustrated period scene of a man in early-1900s suit and cap stepping into a Ford Model T outside the "Biograph Theatre" marquee advertising "The Artful Dodger," with a thought bubble above showing rows of parked cars at an outdoor movie screening.
“New means create new goals.”
Illustrated interior of a rustic coffee shop with several patrons seated separately, each connected by small thought-bubble trails to one large shared blank thought bubble overhead, suggesting wordless, intuitive communication.
“The future of language presents the possibility of a world without words, a wordless, intuitive world, like a technological extension of the action of consciousness.”
Illustration set in a lush jungle showing a feather-adorned Indigenous tribesman facing a translucent glowing green humanoid figure whose body is composed of streaming binary code.
“The new electronic man and pre-literate man see eye to eye.”
Stylized line-art illustration of an elevated highway with a bright yellow central lane sweeping up into a sharp architectural peak, flanked by a modern city skyline of glass skyscrapers.
“The road is our major architectural form.”
Illustration of a cluttered living room where a mother holds a baby on a couch surrounded by several children, most staring blankly at an unseen glowing television screen while a teenager scrolls a phone.
“We are not the true parents of our children.”
Illustrated lineup of warriors and soldiers spanning history left to right — an Indigenous fighter, Roman legionaries, a medieval knight, WWI and modern soldiers, a futuristic armored figure, and an astronaut on the moon — set against a backdrop of fire, smoke, and space.
“We put on our technology as evolutionary clothing.”
Comic-style illustration of a robed orator gesturing dramatically from a pedestal, his speech rendered as a jumbled speech bubble of scrambled Greek letters, while an assistant arranges the same letters into ordered puzzle pieces spelling Greek words like "ΑΡΕΤΗ" and "ΔΙΚΑΙΟΣΥΝΗ" on a scroll.
“Writing is the spatialization of thought.”
The YouTube logo: a red rounded rectangle with a white play-button triangle beside the black "YouTube" wordmark on a black background.
[With electronic media, we are building] “…a new tribal encyclopedia of auditory incantation”
© The Estate of Marshall McLuhan