A dictionary of Marshall McLuhan’s quotations

The artist is a person who is especially aware of the challenge and dangers of new environments presented to human sensibility. Whereas the ordinary person seeks security by numbing his perceptions against the impact of new experience, the artist delights in this novelty and instinctively creates situations that both reveal it and compensate for it.
“The Emperor's New Clothes”, (1968), reprinted in Essential McLuhan (1995), p 339
Year: 1968
Chapter: Art, Artists
Compiled by William Kuhns
© 2026, The Estate of Marshall McLuhan