A dictionary of Marshall McLuhan’s quotations

Compiled by William Kuhns
©2026 Marshall McLuhan Estate

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Found 7 quotes.
The American image of itself, American goals, American directions, have been scrapped by electric speeds. I am not making value judgments. I am simply observing that if you accelerate any structure beyond a certain speed it collapses.
“The Global Theatre”, in Ekistics 190, September (1971), p182
Quote #236
Year: 1971
Chapter: America, North America
Now if China follows the same course - and it appears to be about to do that - then the transformation of the Chinese world will be very rapid twenty years. They would flip out of their culture, wipe off their whole ancient culture in twenty years and become incredibly aggressive and specialized and goal-oriented, because the specialist man always has a goal.
“Living at the Speed of Light”, Speech. U of So Fla. (1974), reprinted in Understanding Me, 2003, p 236
Quote #1092
Year: 1974
Chapter: China, Chinese
The “Law of Implementation” is that the newest awareness must be processed by the established procedures. [Italicized in the book]
Take Today with Barrington Nevitt, 1973, p 236
Quote #3295
Year: 1973
Chapter: Law of Implementation
The only question which logic can solve by itself is a question in logic.
Nashe dissertation, 1943, original typescript, p 236
Quote #3614
Year: 1943
Chapter: Logic & its Faultlines
As an investigator, I have no fixed point of view, no commitment to any theory, my own or anyone else's. As a matter of fact, I'm completely ready to junk any statement I've ever made about any subject if events don't bear me out, or if I discover it isn't contributing to an understanding of the problem. The better part of my work on media is actually somewhat like a safe-cracker's. I don't know what's inside; maybe it's nothing. I just sit down and start to work. I grope, I listen, I test, I accept and discard; I try
out different sequences — until the tumblers fall and the doors spring open.
“Playboy Interview: Marshall McLuhan: A Candid Conversation with the High Priest of Popcult and Metaphysician of Media.” By Eric Norden”, in Playboy Magazine, March (1969), p 54, reprinted in Essential McLuhan (1995), p 236
Quote #3930
Year: 1969
Chapter: McLuhan on McLuhan
Any approach to environmental problems must be sufficiently flexible and adaptable to encompass the entire environmental matrix, which is in constant flux. I consider myself a generalist, not a specialist who has staked out a tiny plot of study as his intellectual turf and is oblivious to everything else. Actually, my work is a depth operation, the accepted practice in most modern disciplines from psychiatry to metallurgy and structural analysis. Effective study of the media deals not only with the content of the media but with the media themselves and the total cultural environment within which the media function. Only by standing aside from any phenomenon and taking an overview can you discover its operative principles and lines of force. There's really nothing inherently startling or radical about this study — except that for some reason few have had the vision to undertake it For the past 3500 years of the Western world, the effects of media–whether it’s speech, writing, printing, photography, radio or television–have been systematically overlooked by social observers. Even in today’s revolutionary electronic age, scholars evidence few signs of modifying this traditional stance of ostrich like disregard.
“Playboy Interview: Marshall McLuhan: A Candid Conversation with the High Priest of Popcult and Metaphysician of Media.” By Eric Norden”, in Playboy Magazine, March (1969), p 54, reprinted in Essential McLuhan (1995), p 236 - 237
Quote #3931
Year: 1969
Chapter: McLuhan on McLuhan
Anthropologist Leach, whose models of ideal order are naturally tribal, greets the decay of the Western family with a cheer. (Runaway World?) Somnambulistically he is with the trend of the electrically regenerated kids of the West. (From six onward they could form little psychedelic communities.)
Culture Is Our Business, (1970), p 236
Quote #6131
Year: 1970
Chapter: Retribalizing

Drawn to McLuhan #15

Small black-and-white illustration of a Revolutionary War general striding into a modern military briefing room full of contemporary officers.
“We live centuries ahead of our thinking.”
Two-panel illustration pairing a prehistoric group drumming and singing around a campfire with modern college students singing together on headphones.
“We live by music.”
Cartoon of a grinning man in a suit running down a suburban street holding up a glowing laptop that reads EUREKA!
“Twentieth century man runs down the street shouting, I have the answers! What are the questions?”
Illustration of pedestrians on a busy sidewalk, each marked with a large yellow lightning bolt, absorbed in their phones outside coffee, tech, and news shops.
“The word serenity isn’t even applicable in an age like ours.”
Row of eight framed portraits on a brick wall, progressing from smiling graduates in caps to figures in increasingly tall dunce caps.
“The ignorance of how to use new knowledge stockpiles exponentially.”
Photograph of a contemporary dance class, pairs of dancers in acrobatic partnered poses filling a sunlit studio floor.
“Space is not a cavity to be filled but a possibility to be shaped.”
Cartoon of a father and son on a couch pointing excitedly at a TV showing a fantasy sports betting broadcast with player stats and odds.
“New sports will include the audience in the action.”
Three-panel illustration showing a father helping a boy roll a metal hoop, the boy running it down a sidewalk with a stick, and a grown man hula-hooping in a backyard.
“Invention, in a word, is a translation of one kind of space into another.”
Sepia-toned illustration of a man in a leather jacket standing with a raised fist between two towering stacks of books lining a cobblestone street.
“I am an intellectual thug who has been slowly accumulating a private arsenal with every intention of using it.” (in a 1950 letter to Ezra Pound)
Cartoon of a father reclining on a couch reading a book with his feet up while a baby cries on the floor nearby and an unanswered rotary telephone rings loudly on a side table.
“A man’s home is his hassle.”
© The Estate of Marshall McLuhan