A dictionary of Marshall McLuhan’s quotations

Compiled by William Kuhns
©2026 Marshall McLuhan Estate

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Viewing chapter Divided by Media (16 quotes)
We have no reason to be grateful to those who juggle the thresholds [of our changing adaptations] in the name of haphazard innovation.
“The Relation of Environment to Anti-Environment,” The University of Windsor Review, Vol. 11, No. 1, (1966), p 10, reprinted in Through the Vanishing Point with Harley Parker (1968),p 253 , and McLuhan Unbound #4, (2017), p 19
Quote #1594
Year: 1966
The global-village conditions being forged by the electric technology stimulate more discontinuity and diversity and division than the old mechanical, standardized society; in fact, the global village makes maximum disagreement and creative dialog inevitable.
“Playboy Interview: Marshall McLuhan: A Candid Conversation with the High Priest of Popcult and Metaphysician of Media”. By Eric Norden. Playboy Magazine, March (1969), p 70, reprinted in The Essential McLuhan (1995), p 259
Quote #1595
Year: 1969
Chapters: Dialogue | Discontinuity
Today, civil defence would seem to consist in protection against media fallout. In the past, war has consisted in the movement of commodities back and forth across frontiers.
What I Learned on the Project (1959-60), in NAEB Report on Understanding New Media, June (1960), p 2
Quote #1596
Year: 1959
Chapter: Education
Is it not terribly wasteful of values and opportunities, as well as destructive of harmony that unwittingly men should so embroil themselves in civil feuds arising from media change?
“New Media and the new Education” (1960), p 190
Quote #1597
Year: 1960
Chapters: Education | Harmony | Wake Them Up! | Warnings
The transforming power of media is easy to explain, but the ignoring of this power is not at all easy to explain.
Understanding Media (1964), MIT/Routledge edition, p 304
Quote #1598
Year: 1964
Chapters: Education | Narcissus, Denial of Media Effects | Warnings
But with regard to the bomb and retaliation as deterrent, it is obvious that numbness is the result of any prolonged terror, a fact that was discovered when the fall-out shelter program was broached. The price of eternal vigilance is indifference.
Understanding Media (1964), MIT/Routledge edition, p 30
Quote #1599
Year: 1964
Chapters: Education | Warnings
It was James Joyce in Finnegans Wake who demonstrated that the way to overcome the fear of the present, and of innovation in general, is to make an inventory of all the effects of the new thing as it encounters all the older forms of the society. Failure to make this inventory results in the use of the present as a nostalgic mirror for the past.
“The future of morality: the inner versus the outer quest”, in “The new morality: continuity and discontinuity”, ed. William Dunphy (New York: Herder and Herder, 1967), p 176
Quote #1600
Year: 1967
Chapters: Education | Media Study

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.
“I have nothing but distaste for the process of change. Given the choice? I would have preferred to live in the thirteenth century.”
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.”
Not many of us are as alert as the kindergartner who said to Garry Moore, "How did you get off TV?"
Understanding Media, 1964, MIT/Routledge edition, p 317
Quote #1601
Year: 1964
Chapter: Education
Education is ideally civil defense against media fall-out.
Understanding Media, 1964, MIT/Routledge edition, p 195
Quote #1602
Year: 1964
Chapter: Education
Just as we now try to control atom-bomb fallout, so we will one day try to control media fallout.
Understanding Media, 1964, MIT/Routledge edition, p 195
Quote #1603
Year: 1964
Chapter: Education
The tribal-global village is far more divisive – full of fighting – than any nationalism ever was. Village is fission, not fusion, in depth. People leave small towns to avoid involvement. The big city lined them with its uniformity and impersonal milieu. They sought propriety and in the city, money is made by uniformity and repeatability.
The hot and Cool Interview, 1967, in Essays Media Research (1997), p 58
Quote #1604
Year: 1967
Chapter: Global Village
The new information environment is, in the highest degree, the scene of the hunter. It is the scene of perpetual warfare and it now surrounds every man. Both the need for military and commercial information has led in the last decade to innovations of electric service that have crossed all private and national boundaries alike.
“Mr. Nixon and the Dropout Strategy” (1973), typescript, p 1
Quote #1605
Year: 1973
Chapters: Chiasmus, Flips, Reversals | Hunters of Information | Information
Language as the technology of human extension, whose powers of division and separation we know so well, may have been the “Tower of Babel” by which men sought to scale the highest heavens.
Understanding Media, 1964, MIT/Routledge edition, p 80
Quote #1606
Year: 1964
The more you create village conditions, the more discontinuity and division and diversity. The global village absolutely insures maximal disagreement on all points.
McLuhan Hot and Cool (1967), p 272
Quote #1607
Year: 1967
Chapter: Discontinuity
No matter how much technology reduces the intellectual and social isolation of people, their metaphysical isolation is little affected.
“Technology and Political Change.” International Journal, vol. 7, no. 3, 1952, p 189
Quote #1608
Year: 1952
Chapter: He’s Hopeful
Perhaps the terrifying thing about the new media for most of us is their inevitable evocation of irrational response. The irrational has become the major dimension of experience in our world.
“Culture without Literacy”, in Explorations #1, December (1953), p 126 reprinted in Essential McLuhan, (1995), p 311, additional reprint in Media Research Technology, Art and Communication (1997), p 136, and McLuhan Unbound #6, (2017)
Quote #1609
Year: 1953
Chapters: Anxieties Caused By Change | From Tribal to Literate | Hardware / Software | Time | Today’s Transition | Warnings
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