A dictionary of Marshall McLuhan’s quotations

We must maximize rather than minimize the various features of our new media. It’s easy now to see that they are not mere vehicles for already achieved experience and insight. We have move far beyond mechanization. Let us not lose ourselves by supposing that we have merely to contend with new forms of mechanization. Ratio and TV aren’t new ways of handling manuscript and book culture. The motor-car wasn’t a substitute for the horse. It did what the horse could never do. Radio and TV aren’t audio-visual aids to enhance or to popularize previous forms of experience. They are new languages. We must first master and then teach these new languages in all their minute particularity and riches.
“The Post-Literate Man”, 1973, Cycles 7, p 231
Year: 1973
↪ Also at #150, #1812, #3756, #4659
Compiled by William Kuhns
© 2026, The Estate of Marshall McLuhan