A dictionary of Marshall McLuhan’s quotations

Compiled by William Kuhns
©2026 Marshall McLuhan Estate

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The technique is to work backward from effect or result to cause, not from cause to effect. This situation resulting from instantaneous information movement was referred to by A. N. Whitehead in Science and the Modern World, when he pointed out that the great discovery of the later nineteenth century was not the invention of this or that, but the discovery of the technique of discovery. We can discover anything we decide to discover.
“Is It Natural That One Medium Should Appropriate and Exploit Another?” (1967); The Essential McLuhan, 1995, p 187
Quote #1879
Year: 1967
Chapter: Effect

Drawn to McLuhan #6

Three-panel comic illustration of a vintage tube-radio-style robot wrapping a woman in strips of punched ticker tape printed with algorithmic text, with a close-up of the text-covered tape and a final panel of the woman standing beside the robot.
“With computers we are taped typed and scrubbed.”
Two-panel cartoon: in the left panel a man in overalls repairs a disassembled humanoid robot on a workbench; in the right panel the now-functional robot welds metal while the man, startled, carries a box of parts away.
“We make our tools and our tools remake us.”
Sketch-style illustration of three figures — a young woman with a backpack, a man in a blue jacket, and an elderly man with a cane — walking away down a country road in different directions, looking back over their shoulders.
“We look at the present through a rear view mirror. We march backwards into the future.”
Split illustration: an office scene with a locked "Suggestions" box and potted plant beside a doorway, leading into an industrial room where a worker in a yellow hazmat suit and gas mask uses tongs to feed a paper into a glowing furnace.
“The idea department of a big firm is a sort of lab for isolating dangerous viruses.”
Illustration of human hands and robotic hands collaboratively assembling and sanding a wooden triangular frame (resembling an impossible/Penrose triangle) on a workbench covered with tools, screws, and blueprints.
“The future work of mankind is to achieve relevance.”
Stylized illustration of four vintage guitar cases leaning against a brick wall beside a "Stage Entrance" sign and band posters reading "Hollow Notes" and "Folk."
“The future of consciousness is already assuming a very different pattern, a very different character.”
Colorful cartoon illustration of a diverse crowd of people singing, dancing, and playing instruments (guitar, violin, drum) together along a tree-lined city park path.
“Sound, in this new world of dance and song, is not for listening, it’s for making.”
Cartoon illustration of a man in a suit walking down a hallway toward three doors marked with male, female, and a half-blue/half-orange question-mark restroom symbols.
“Sex as we now think of it may soon be dead.”
Comic-style caricature of a wild-haired pianist in a tuxedo mid-performance at a grand piano, mouth wide open with piano-key teeth, one hand raised and the other holding a concert program, an audience visible in the background.
“Mine is a transformation theory: how people are changed by the instruments they employ.”
Satirical oil painting in an ornate gilded frame depicting a shirtless man on a rearing horse against a mountain steppe landscape, styled as classical equestrian portraiture, with a nameplate on the frame.
"It is a characteristic of all social processes that they become manifest and conspicuous at the moment of their demise."
Cartoon illustration of two robots seated in a futuristic control room, monitoring screens labeled "Live Gum Interaction," "Wrigley Consumption," and other real-time metrics, with a pair of hands unwrapping a stick of gum shown on a central display.
“Each stick of gum we reach for is acutely noted by some computer that translates out least gesture into a new probability curve.”
© The Estate of Marshall McLuhan