A dictionary of Marshall McLuhan’s quotations

Compiled by William Kuhns
©2026 Marshall McLuhan Estate

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Viewing chapter Architecture (8 quotes)
[In The Beginnings of Architecture] Giedion cites the evidence several times that there is no architectural enclosing of space before script. Giedion does not know why this should be. Visual space alone of all the space discriminated by our various senses is continuous, uniform and connected. Any technology that extends the visual power imposes these visual properties upon all other spaces. Our own return in the electric age to a nonvisual world has confronted us suddenly with this tyrannical and usurping power of the visual over the other senses.
Letter to Jaqueline Tyrwhitt, May 11, 1964, in Letters of Marshall McLuhan (1987), p 298-299
Quote #410
Year: 1964
When enclosed, or translated into visual space, architecture tends to lose its tactile kinetic pressure. A square is the enclosure of a visual space; that is, it consists of space properties abstracted from manifest tensions. A triangle follows lines of force, this being the most economical way of anchoring a vertical object. A square moves beyond such kinetic pressures to enclose visual space relations, while depending upon diagonal anchors. This separation of the visual from direct tactile and kinetic pressure, and its translation into new dwelling spaces, occurs only when men have learned to practice specialization of their senses, and fragmentation of their work skills. The square room or house speaks the language of the sedentary specialist, while the round hut or igloo, like the conical wigwam, tells of the integral nomadic ways of food-gathering communities.
Understanding Media, MIT/Routledge edition, (1964), p 125
Quote #411
Year: 1964
Less familiar is the architectural revolution made possible by improvements in heating centuries ago. With the mining of coal on a large scale in the Renaissance, inhabitants in the colder climates discovered great new resources of personal energy. New means of heating permitted the manufacture of glass and the enlargement of living quarters and the raising of ceilings. The Burgher house of the Renaissance became at once bedroom, kitchen, workshop, and sale outlet.
Understanding Media, MIT/Routledge edition, (1964), p 186
Quote #412
Year: 1964
The ancient city, however, could appear as quickly as specialist man could separate his inner functions in space and architecture. To say that the cities of the Aztecs and the Peruvians resembled European cities is only to say that they shared and extended the same faculties in both regions. The question of direct physical influence and imitation as if by diffusion becomes irrelevant.
Understanding Media, MIT/Routledge edition, (1964), p 186-187
Quote #413
Year: 1964
If we sit and talk in a dark room, words suddenly acquire new meanings and different textures. They become richer, even, than architecture, which Le Corbusier rightly says can best be felt at night. All those gestural qualities that the printed page strips from language come back in the dark, and on the radio.
Understanding Media (1964), MIT/Routledge edition, p 303
Quote #414
Year: 1964
MCLUHAN: …the high-rise is a new form of communication AUDIENCE MEMBER: “it’s a lot of (inaudible) isn’t it” MCLUHAN: If it’s on the side of a mountain it looks nice. If it’s on a flat street it looks horrible AUDIENCE MEMBER: If it blocks out individual homes (audio hard to determine) MCLUHAN: Otherwise, it’s just a cemetery. They have high-rise cemeteries now. This is what they’re really intended for. You buy yourself a little box, in the sky, instead of taking up space on the ground. Literally, the new high-rises are all cemeteries.
Undated Monday Night Seminar, available on YouTube as https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXl98nvFuGY&t=11s --  time stamp 1:09-1:40.
Quote #415
Chapter: Communication
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXl98nvFuGY
Eskimos don’t live in igloos, they live in stone houses on the seashore, somewhat round in shape. The igloo is a product of the white man’s visitations. When the white man showed them the Primus stove, they added that to the snow house and it became possible to live there. Or if they didn’t live there, they used it for their trapping lines.
The Museum as Large-Room Pinball Machine, Marshall McLuhan, Harley Parker, and Museum Professionals, 1967, full transcript of a seminar at the City Museum of New York, October 9-10, 1967, edited by William Buxton, published by U. of Alberta Press, 2026, p 103
Quote #416
Year: 1967
Chapter: Tribal Societies

Drawn to McLuhan #4

Color illustration of a tired-looking mother on a cluttered couch holding a baby, surrounded by several children of different ages, most of them absorbed in phones or the television rather than each other.
"We are not the true parents of our children."
Color illustration of a hand holding a wrinkled "Monthly Megabucks" alumni loan letter with a bold red "LOAN PAYMENT OVERDUE" stamp, spotlit against a black background.
"The trouble with a cheap specialized education is you never stop paying for it."
Mixed-media illustration of a pencil-sketched woman seen from behind looking into an ornate framed mirror; her reflection, rendered in full color, shows a polished professional alter-ego against a city skyline, beneath the caption "What AI Knows About You."
"The data banks know us better than we know ourselves."
Color illustration of a devastated, cracked cityscape with skyscrapers splitting apart and toppling into a flooded street beneath a smoky orange sky.
"The contained, the distinct, the separate – our Western legacy – are being replaced by the flowing, the unified, the fused."
Color comic illustration of Superman flying between two winged, haloed angels against a cloudy blue sky, visually likening him to a medieval angel.
"Superman is the comic strip brother of the medieval angels."
Color illustration of a street musician trio playing guitar, violin, and drum on a tree-lined urban path while a diverse crowd of people dance, cartwheel, and celebrate around them.
"Sound, in this new world of dance and song, is not for listening, it's for making."
Color comic-style illustration of a pilot and a woman having breakfast in an airport cafe overlooking the tarmac, where a ground crew member signals a parked jet with semaphore flags; a speech bubble reads "Weird. He just said to the pilot, 'Knock knock'..."
"If our new media constitute so complete a range of expressiveness as both to enhance and almost to supplant speech itself, then we will have moved into the period of post-literacy."
Color cartoon of scientists in lab coats dancing among physics laboratory equipment, with a speech bubble joking about subatomic particles "dancing," while two onlookers watch in surprise from the doorway.
"Science and magic have married each other."
Color illustration of a string quartet performing on a circular stage in an ornate domed concert hall; one of the four musicians is depicted as a metallic robot playing alongside the human performers, before an applauding crowd.
"Nothing is so human about us as our technology."
Color cartoon illustration of a female stand-up comedian performing on a small club stage under a "The Laugh Comedy" marquee, with an enthusiastic audience laughing, clapping, and cheering below her.
"Manslaughter and man's laughter are spelled the same."
This reminded me of Sigfried Giedion, whose work I have followed since 1939. He was in St. Louis then, giving the lectures that were published as Space, Time and Architecture. I became acquainted with him and have known him ever since. … Giedion’s whole approach to art and technology is environmental. He called the environment non-museum history, because people are always unaware of it. Now the study of environments as a new perception and new teleology is his theme; so the secret of Giedion is indispensable in the context of here and now. His whole approach to the study of changing styles in art and architecture is something I have taken for granted since ’39, when I first met him. It was all new to me then. … So perhaps I have taken too much for granted. This Giedion approach (like Hall’s educational approach, which we mentioned earlier, to the hidden dimensions of experience) is one which seems to me indicated for our time.
The Museum as Large-Room Pinball Machine, Marshall McLuhan, Harley Parker, and Museum Professionals, 1967, full transcript of a seminar at the City Museum of New York, October 9-10, 1967, edited by William Buxton, published by U. of Alberta Press, 2026, p 161
Quote #417
Year: 1967
Chapters: Environment | Giedion, Sigfried | Museum
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