A dictionary of Marshall McLuhan’s quotations

Compiled by William Kuhns
©2026 Marshall McLuhan Estate

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Viewing chapter Dropout (13 quotes)
“Had to quit school to find out who I was.” (TV Guide, May 11/68)
Culture Is Our Business (1970), p 64
Quote #1610
Year: 1970
Today the executive is a drop-out at forty, because the higher he climbs the tree, the less participation he has in the actual processes of the company. …The President of the United States, for example, is necessarily a script reader… He is an image.
“McLuhan Futuregram #1: Culture Is Our Big / New / Hot Business,” Dew-Line Newsletter, Vol 1 No. 4, October, 1968, p 3
Quote #1611
Year: 1968
BRUCE POWERS: Well, in what way could [home computers] create a new kind of personal protection?
MARSHALL MCLUHAN: It could create more personal leisure. Having more leisure will encourage people to “drop out” to enhance their sense of identity. If their jobs are becoming routine and not helping the necessities of self-definition, then being able to get that occupation done within less time than was previously required, will enable people to set aside large blocks of leisure time with which to explore a hobby, a sport, a secret avocation. In other words, more time to “drop out” and "tune in" on themselves.
The Global Village with Bruce Powers (1989), p 143
Quote #1612
Year: 1989
If your son runs away from home, he’s probably following in your footsteps. (Life ad)
Culture Is Our Business, (1970), p 98
Quote #1613
Year: 1970
Loafing could reveal your true self because you are “dropping out” to be alone. Chaplin, like Huck, epitomized the transformation of loafing. Spiffy, elegant in bowler, cane, and morning coat, he became a footloose knight of the road.
The Global Village with Bruce Powers, 1989, pages 147-148
Quote #1614
Year: 1989
Chapter: Pattern Recognition
In Watts there was a report of kids saying quite freely, "We are dropouts because we do not want to go to school and disrupt our education." … What goes on inside the school is an interruption of education, of the education available in the current environment.
“Education in the Electronic Age”, Interchange, Vol 1, No 4, 1970, p 1
Quote #1615
Year: 1970
It is the absence of any experience of participation in the learning processes that creates the drop-out.
”Electronic Man and the End of the Neolithic Age” (1965), p 2
Quote #1616
Year: 1965

Drawn to McLuhan #14

Illustration progressing from a bare-chested tribal man writing by hand on the left, through a red-threaded ghostly bearded figure overlapping a young man typing at a laptop, to streams of glowing green binary code flowing off to the right.
“Today we experience in reverse what preliterate man faced with writing.”
Surreal painterly illustration of anthropomorphic roses with human faces in a garden, expressing anger, grief, and sorrow, one holding a thorned whip, one weeping, one bleeding, and one reading a letter with a quill.
“The private psyche may be an artificial monster or the most precious discovery.”
Four-panel illustration in dark, moody tones showing people being watched through everyday technology: a woman checking a location app, a neighbor peering through blinds, a smart speaker listening in a kitchen, and teens on phones in a school hallway.
“The entire planet has become a whispering gallery, with a large portion of mankind engaged in making its living by keeping the rest of mankind under surveillance.”
Comic-style illustration of an older lecturer at a podium addressing a classroom, gesturing toward a student with a raised hand, with a speech bubble of bold text above him and equations on the blackboard behind.
“That question is so stupid that it deserves an answer.”
Split image contrasting ancient petroglyph carvings of a bird, a hand, and a wolf on a stone surface with a glowing circular digital portal containing the same bird, hand, and wolf as emoji, set against a futuristic city skyline at dusk.
“Primitive man always thought that they made the world, that they wound it up and renewed its energies by their rituals. Are we not moving very much back into that state?”
Cartoon of a distraught teenage boy hurling his phone across a living room while shouting about being unfriended, as his startled parents watch from the couch
“Perhaps the terrifying thing about the new media for most of us is the inevitable evocation of irrational response.”
Illustrated scene of an older man and a young man facing each other in a diner booth over coffee, while outside the window a uniform crowd of people in pointed dunce caps files past.
“It has taken me a long time to take stupidity and indifference for granted as a universal and irremediable human condition.”
Cartoon illustration of a giant robot in a city street gathering white eggs into a basket, gathered from a dense crowd of people below, each topped with an empty speech bubble.
“Information is the distillate of human chatter.”
Sepia-toned illustration of a man in a leather jacket standing with a raised fist and hand on hip between two towering columns of stacked books lining a cobblestone street.
“I am an intellectual thug who has been slowly accumulating a private arsenal with every intention of using it.” (in a 1950 letter to Ezra Pound)
Photograph of a young woman in a coffee shop holding up her smartphone, which displays a glowing image of a human brain on its screen, as she studies it intently.
“We have become an organism that now wears its brain outside its skull and its nerves outside its hide.”
The “generation gap” is literally the space in which generation or change occurs. Paradoxically, the “drop-out” is a person who is trying to get back in touch.
“Education and the New Media”, March 25, (1970), Televised in France, Le Monde Diplomatique, April 29, (1970), p 6
Quote #1617
Year: 1970
“Camp” is a kind of dropoutism resulting from the new electric environment. All the earlier forms go into quotes, as it were, when they have this new world to encompass them. Even camping out is made possible by varieties of new artificial environments created by new gadgets.
From Cliché to Archetype with Wilfred Watson (1970), p 188
Quote #1618
Year: 1970
We now experience simultaneously the dropout and the teach-in. The two forms are correlative. They belong together. The teach-in represents an attempt to shift education from instruction to discovery, from brainwashing students to brainwashing instructors. It is a big, dramatic reversal. Vietnam, as the content of the teach-in, is a very small and perhaps misleading Red Herring. It really has little to do with the teach-in, as such, anymore than with the dropout.
The Medium Is the Massage (1967), p 101
Quote #1619
Year: 1967
Chapter: Discovery
The dropout is a person trying to get in touch. To come back to the matter of interval, the hangup means connection; that’s out of touch. When you are connected, tied in, you are hung up. When you drop out then you get the interface again, the resonance, the dialogue.
“The Hardware-Software Mergers: How Successful Have They Been?”, Speech given at the conference, Reappraisal of the Educational Technology Industry, University of Chicago, November 16-18, 1969. Transcript, p 5
Quote #1620
Year: 1969
A young friend visiting from Harvard the other day said, “You know, my generation is not goal-oriented. We want simply to know what’s going on.” And he didn’t know quite how to get at it—but the desire to know just what is going on rather than just to pursue goals creates many of the difficulties for our children. The drop-out situation is the rejection of goals, because our children go to schools where they have the old strip culture, the old fragmented subject matters and so on without any interconnection, without any sense of total field, without any of the challenge of the hunter.
“What the New Communications Will Mean to Public Relations”, in Public Relations Journal, January, 1967, p 23
Quote #1621
Year: 1967
J.P.M. VAN SANTEN: You think the executive is being dropped out?
MARSHALL MCLUHAN: Yes, I think he is being pushed out by the speed. Anybody can pick up the telephone and talk to anybody. Everyone’s business has a huge information environment around it. The market used to be the environment. The world of prices of dealing, stocks, everything. The market is the figure, but no longer the environment. Outside the marketplace there is a new kind of information, the satellite world. The real spin on the business world today is information, it is not money.
“J.P.M. van Santen Interview”, Toronto, October 25, 1972, transcript, p 3
Quote #1622
Year: 1972
© The Estate of Marshall McLuhan