A dictionary of Marshall McLuhan’s quotations

We can now begin to understand why the Emperor of Japan is not a private person at all, and is not the ”head” of a country: for to be the head of a vast popular or power structure is not to have any private ambition whatever. The paradox is that great power swallows both the private person and the private goals, depriving the possessor of such power of all the satisfactions which belong to the human scale.
“Mr. Nixon’s Dropout Strategy” (1973), typescript p 8
Year: 1973
↪ Also at #2778, #5766
Compiled by William Kuhns
© 2026, The Estate of Marshall McLuhan