A dictionary of Marshall McLuhan’s quotations

Compiled by William Kuhns
©2026 Marshall McLuhan Estate

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Viewing chapter Celebrity and Fame (9 quotes)
“The very scholars and journalists who had praised him in the 1960s tried to bury him in the 1970s, questioning the validity of his complex theories. ‘A superstar', he laments today, ‘is just another word for a sitting duck.’” Barbara Rowes
Writer, “If the Media Didn't Get Marshall McLuhan's Message in the '60s, Another Is on the Way”, People Magazine, Vol. 6, no. 12, September 20, 1976; p 4 of the interview transcript
Quote #935
Year: 1976
Chapter: Celebrity and Fame
…when distinguished foreigners come to America they naturally seek the company of movie stars rather than of the wealthy. The stars have a personal symbolic relation to the currents of national life which the remote and anonymous figures of celestial finance do not. The stars are distinct individuals wearing human masks that represent some aspect of the collective dream. But the rich are dim and obscure, sharing the states and make-up of the very people above whom they have risen, and yet deprived of the satisfactions of mass solidarity in an egalitarian society.
The Mechanical Bride, (1951), p 56
Quote #936
Year: 1951
The more that is publicly recorded about the actual existence of any person, the more he is diminished in his private existence. Like any public entertainer, he becomes his admirers or his recordings. By a commodious vicus of recirculation, this flips us back to the Electric Circus, in which music is no longer for listening to but merging with.
“Reversal of the Overheated Image”, Playboy, December 1968, p 245
Quote #937
Year: 1968
Chapters: Chiasmus, Flips, Reversals | McLuhanisms & Zingers
You ask of Tom Wolfe. He is a Virginian. A Ph.D. in English from Yale. Saw him a good deal in San Francisco last summer. Shall send you his piece on me. We have been in Life at length – the whole family. Also in Fortune, Newsweek, Time, Vogue and the rest. Suddenly I’m a bestseller pet of the College crowds. Must get out some more while the mood lasts.
Letter to John Wain, March 26, 1966, quoted in Wain’s memoir, Dear Shadows (1986)
Quote #938
Year: 1966
In business, as in society, "getting on" may mean getting out. There is no "ahead" in a world that is an echo chamber of instantaneous celebrity.
Understanding Media, (1964) MIT/Routledge, p 264
Quote #939
Year: 1964
When one comes into the public domain one becomes a thing and everyone does that thing except oneself.
Letter to Richard Berg, August 1, 1969 [LAC]
Quote #940
Year: 1969
Any individual who manipulates the public for his private good may also feel the cleansing power of publicity.
Understanding Media (1964), MIT/Routledge edition, p 216
Quote #941
Year: 1964
Chapter: Print
[Figures of popular culture] exist not so much in themselves but as types of collective life felt and perceived through a mass medium. L'il Abner, Bob Hope, Donald Duck, and Marilyn Monroe become points of collective awareness and communication for an entire society. And as technology increasingly undertakes to submit the entire planet as well as the contents of consciousness to the purposes of man's factive intelligence it behooves us to consider the whole process of magical transformation involved in the media acutely and extensively.
“Sight, Sound and the Fury”, in The Commonweal (1954), p 9
Quote #942
Year: 1954
Chapters: Extending Consciousness | Media Study

Drawn to McLuhan #12

Whimsical vintage-style illustration of a man in a top hat perched on a crescent moon, fishing with a line that strings together a chorus line of dancers, a line of men, a factory assembly line, and a clothesline of laundry, all suspended above a globe of the Earth.
“We have all noticed how lineality has faded from the current scene. The chorus line, the stag line, the assembly line, all have gone the way of the clothes line.”
Illustration of two medieval soldiers in armor playing cards by candlelight atop a castle wall, while a distant army with ladders approaches across the countryside.
“The price of eternal vigilance is indifference.”
Dark, moody illustration of a giant smartphone with muscular humanoid arms and legs, its screen showing a glowing image of Earth crisscrossed with bright network connection lines.
"The next medium, whatever it is -- it may be the extension of consciousness -- will include television as its content, not as its environment, and will transform television into an art form."
Four-panel comic strip showing an office worker at a computer gradually transforming, panel by panel, into a snarling green troll-like monster as his desk grows messier and the room darkens.
“The global village is a place of very arduous interfaces and very abrasive situations.”
Photo-realistic image of a television news anchor at a studio desk shrugging with raised palms, beneath an on-screen headline reading "Real Video or Deepfake? Experts are Split."
“The difference between factitious and fictitious tends to dissolve.”
Split illustration joined by a handshake inside overlapping speech bubbles: an elderly bard playing a lyre beside a campfire on the left, and an armored ancient warrior shaking hands with a red rocket-booted superhero in front of a glowing television screen on the right.
“The culture heroes of preliteracy and postliteracy alike are robots.”
Comic-style illustration of a smug, cigar-smoking man in a pinstriped suit reclining in a leather armchair with his feet up on an ottoman, a globe and bookshelves behind him and a thought bubble with an exclamation point.
“One of the nicest things about being big is the luxury of thinking little.”
Cartoon illustration of an open-plan office in which the workers are drawn as giant bees hunched over keyboards at computer monitors, beneath a wall sign reading "App-Lied Intelligence."
“Like the bees in the plant world, men have always been the sex organs of the technological world.”
Illustration of a hand holding a smartphone that displays a mock nutrition-facts label titled "This Podcast's Nutritive Value," listing percentages such as Tribal Affirmation Score and Rage Incitement Factor, against a softly blurred living-room background.
“It is we ourselves who serve these environments.”
Newscasters and actors alike report the frequency with which they are approached by people who feel they've met them before. Joanne Woodward in an interview was asked what was the difference between being a movie star and a TV actress. She replied: "When I was in the movies I heard people say, ‘There goes Joanne Woodward.’ Now they say, ‘There goes somebody I think I know.’”
Understanding Media (1964), MIT/Routledge edition, pp 317-318
Quote #943
Year: 1964
Nobody who represents a considerable proportion of the community can be given a great deal of public coverage without garnering a great deal of public acclaim at the same time.
“Mr. Nixon and the Dropout Strategy” (1973), in New York Times, Jul 29, 1973, p E13
Quote #944
Year: 1973
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