A dictionary of Marshall McLuhan’s quotations

Compiled by William Kuhns
©2026 Marshall McLuhan Estate

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Viewing chapter Charisma (11 quotes)
"Putting on" only the congregation as his corporate mask of dignity deprives the celebrant of any compelling power or charisma; and this fact is not lost on the young adults who, naturally, can think of no reason for seeking divine absolution nor for pursuing a merely banal vocation of a humanistic padre.
Some Further Comments on Liturgy and Media” in The Critic, Vol.31, No. 4, March - April (1973), p 70, reprinted in The Medium and the Light: Reflections on Religion (1999), p 135
Quote #998
Year: 1973
Source: <em>NAEB Report on Understanding New Media,</em> 1960, Introduction, p xi
[C]hange itself becomes the very matrix and foundation of society.
NAEB Report on Understanding New Media, 1960, Introduction, p xi
Quote #999
Year: 1960
Chapter: Change
As a sort of capsule observation, it could be said that the computer is the LSD of the business world, transforming its outlook and objectives. None of the existing goals of twentieth-century business enterprise can survive the impact of the computer for even ten years. The drop-out is not a phenomenon limited to the high school or the campus, for the higher the executive the more he feels cut off from the real developments of the operation he directs.
War and Peace in the Global Village, 1968, p 83
Quote #1000
Year: 1968
Chapters: Consciousness | Tools We Shape, Reshape Us | Translating Ourselves Into Information Processes | Drugs
It is a characteristic chiasmus that waits upon the utmost development of any process that the last phase shall show characteristics opposite to the early phases.
The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man, (1962), p 277
Quote #1001
Year: 1962
A typical example of massive psychic chiasmus or reversal occurred when Western man fought the harder for individuality as he surrendered the idea of unique personal existence.
The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man, (1962), p 277
Quote #1002
Year: 1962
Just as Mill fought for individuality even though he had given up the self, the poets and artists moved towards the idea of impersonal process in art production in proportion as they berated the new masses for impersonal process in the consumption of art products. A similar and related reversal or chiasmus occurred when the consumer of popular art was invited by new art forms to become participant in the art process itself
The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man, (1962), p 277
Quote #1003
Year: 1962
Trudeau has the mask of an American Indian and it’s a potent mask. The American Indian does not have a private face. He has the face of his tribe, his clan. Now that’s good TV. It’s called charisma.
“Macleans Interview”, in Macleans magazine (1977), p 4
Quote #1004
Year: 1977

Drawn to McLuhan #9

Vintage-style cartoon illustration of a wild-eyed man in a red suit and hat running off the edge of a cliff while reading an open book and swinging a butterfly net at a monarch butterfly just out of reach.
“The specialist is one who never makes small mistakes while moving toward the grand fallacy.”
Photograph of a museum gallery where two visitors view a large grid of nine framed screens/photographs depicting a lush green forest, arranged edge-to-edge on a white wall.
“The new media are not bridges between man and nature, they are nature.”
Illustrated cartoon of a man in a suit trapped and falling through the neck of a giant hourglass, being funneled through a glowing smartphone into a stream of binary code below, set against an aged newspaper-page background.
“The more that is recorded about each one of us in the data banks, the less we exist.”
Illustrated drawing of an anxious-looking woman biting a pencil while standing in a voting booth with curtains, other voters visible blurred in the background.
“The ballot box, for example, is the product of literate Western culture—a hot box in a cool world—and thus obsolescent. The tribal will is consensually expressed through the simultaneous interplay of all members of a community that is deeply interrelated and involved, and would thus consider the casting of a ‘private’ ballot in a shrouded polling booth a ludicrous anachronism.”
Weathered street-art photograph of three life-size paper cutout figures pasted on a green wooden wall, each wearing everyday clothing but with a motor-scooter front end/headlight in place of a head.
“People really do think of themselves as specialized machines nowadays. ‘That’s just my speed’ is a most revealing remark.”
Illustrated cartoon of a man sitting hunched before a panel of stern, seated academics at a curved tribunal table in a book-lined hall, with one panelist pointing accusingly as a large speech-bubble text looms overhead.
[In a 1976 letter to a student friend] “In passing, you mention that the moment of judgment would be a judgment by one's peers. This is indeed a terrifying thought.”
Illustrated cartoon of an army of angry, weapon-wielding question-mark characters storming a castle with ladders and axes, while a line of academics in caps and gowns holding open books stands defending the wall.
“Knowledge is a bigger obstacle to problem-solving than ignorance.”
Split illustration showing a man livestreaming from a home office on one side, connected across a globe by a glowing arc to a group of friends watching him on a laptop at an outdoor Paris cafe with the Eiffel Tower visible on the other side.
“If you are moving at the speed of light, you are already there.”
Illustrated comic panel of an older man in a brown tweed jacket and glasses (Marshall McLuhan) gesturing while speaking to a bearded interviewer holding a notebook and tape recorder, seated in a book-lined study with a globe nearby.
Illustrated cartoon of Marshall McLuhan in a suit, surfing on a board reading "The Medium Is the Message" atop a giant wave made of books, ancient Greek philosophers, and 20th-century pop-culture icons (Charlie Brown, Superman, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis, the Beatles) surging around him.
“Control over change would seem to consist in moving with it but ahead of it.”
At the speed of light, policies and parties yield place to charismatic images.
Quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle, July 13, 1977, p 6
Quote #1005
Year: 1977
The main verb in all this is the speed of light, which also alters the role of politician from a party representative to a charismatic image. This image obsolesces parties and policies alike.
Letter to Pierre Elliot Trudeau, December 13, 1977, in Letters of Marshall McLuhan (1987), p 537
Quote #1006
Year: 1977
To be a good TV image, you have to look like a lot of other people. That’s called charisma.
“Interview on the Effects of Media”, CBC appearance with Peter Gzowski, 1977, transcript, 2:29
Quote #1007
Year: 1977
Charisma is an excess of energy, an abundance of personality and magnetic thinking. Charisma can no more be constrained than inspiration can be. It is a kind of magic.”
Quoted in Marshall McLuhan and Northrup Frye: Apocalypse and Alchemy, B.W. Powe (2014), p 63
Quote #1008
Year: 2014
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