A dictionary of Marshall McLuhan’s quotations

Compiled by William Kuhns
©2026 Marshall McLuhan Estate

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Viewing chapter Fake (20 quotes)
Let me mention, however, that we live in the age of the "genuine fake" because we understand for the first time the art process and the making process as never before, so that Picasso said long ago: "I always paint fakes". The function of art in relating us to ourselves and to our world and in freeing us from the adaptive or robot role, has changed entirely in the electric time. The art product as such becomes relatively insignificant compared to the process of making and of participation in that making.
Letter to P.E. Trudeau, March 26, 1974, in Letters of Marshall McLuhan (1987), p 495
Quote #2257
Year: 1974
Chapter: Matching and Making
This is the age of reprography. There are more means of emulating, reflecting, reproducing, duplicating, and making or faking extant in present technologies than ever existed in the world before.
“The Genuine Original Imitation Fake:, DEWLine Newsletter, No 6, May-June 1970, p 4
Quote #2258
Year: 1970
In furs, the genuine fake costs more than real fur. It wears better.
Culture Is Our Business , (1970), p 46
Quote #2259
Year: 1970
A fake Monet by Picasso might be worth more than a mere Monet.
“Fake” tetrad, The Laws of Media, with Eric McLuhan, original draft of 1975, p 2
Quote #2260
Year: 1975
Standing on a Paris street in 1914, watching a parade of military vehicles using a new camouflage, Picasso said, “Braque and I invented that.”
Cubism tetrad in the widely distributed first-draft Laws of the Media, 1975, with Eric McLuhan, p 256
Quote #2261
Year: 1975
Chapter: Cubism
We have to know what we are doing in advance.
We have to repeat what we were about to say.
“The Be-Spoke Tailor” in Explorations 8, October (1957),unnumbered page “section 4”, Issue later reprinted as Verbi-Voco-Visual, (1967), no page numberings in reprint.
Quote #2262
Year: 1957
Chapters: Management | McLuhanisms & Zingers | Satirist
The difference between factitious and fictitious tends to dissolve.
“Information Hunt Looms Big” (1967), p 5
Quote #2263
Year: 1967
Chapters: He’s Doubtful | McLuhanisms & Zingers | Myth, Mythic | Retribalizing

Drawn to McLuhan #13

Split illustration: on the left, a man carefully works on an elaborate model train village built around a mountain; on the right, a man in a green coat boards a vintage passenger train at a busy station platform.
“…whereas verification [left hemisphere of the brain] asks: Did I build the system right? validation [both hemispheres, guided by the right hemisphere] asks, Did I build the right system?” Iain McGilchrist
Illustration of an elderly couple seated at a candlelit dinner table, surrounded by translucent, glowing blue figures made of binary code representing an extended family gathered for a feast.
“We have to invent a new concept of civilization in order to live at the speed of light.”
Split illustration: the top half shows two women rendered as glowing digital/binary-code figures typing on laptops and connected by a red stream of data across a black background; the bottom half shows the same two women as ordinary photorealistic figures typing on laptops against teal and orange backgrounds.
“We are converting ourselves into information processes.”
Cartoon of a distressed man clutching his head in a city street as dozens of speech bubbles, thought bubbles, and everyday objects all labeled "John" rain down around him.
“The name of a man is a numbing blow from which he never recovers.”
Photograph of a vintage black Ford Model T parked at a scenic hillside overlook, with a modern highway interchange and suburban town spread out in the valley below.
“It is the framework that changes with new technology, and not the picture within the frame.”
Sepia-toned illustration of a smartphone-headed figure in a top hat driving a horse-drawn carriage, with four hunched men in harness straps pulling it while staring down at their own phones.
Circe only turned men into swine. Our problem is tougher.
Illustration of a colonial-era preacher in a wooden pulpit addressing a seated congregation, with a large speech bubble displaying bold printed text.
“Boldness of type created boldness of expression.”
Illustration of a weary older man using a paint roller to whitewash over a colorful carnival scene inside a large thought bubble, with paint drips falling below.
“At the speed of light the need to forget has become a form of nostalgia.”
Cartoon illustration of baseball players sitting in a dugout, staring in bewilderment as an older man in a golf visor and plaid pants walks past carrying a golf bag full of clubs.
“An assumption is an idea that has outlived its uselessness.”
Quote card combining photographic images of marble busts of Plato (hands covering his ears) and Aristotle (hands covering his eyes) beside a sepia photograph of Marshall McLuhan, with a speech bubble of quotation text above them.
“Why has no one in history -- not Plato, certainly not Aristotle, no philosopher, ever regarded our technologies grammatically, asking how they inflect on us?”
What the "practical man" doesn't know is that facts are something made, as the word tells us (facio). Moreover, a fact cannot be connected without "seizing up." The interval or gap is necessary to any practical action. The gap is where the action is. "Ask the man who owns one." The artist and engineer exist to create the right gaps and to avoid unfunny connections.
“Fake-for-All”, in Take today: the executive as dropout, p 81
Quote #2264
Chapter: Interval
The word “fake,” of course, is from the Latin “facio, facere, feci, factum.” Making is literally faking. The artist as “maker” is always in quest of a colossal fiction.
“The Genuine Original Imitation Fake,” DEWLine Newsletter, No 6, May-June 1970, p 4
Quote #2265
Year: 1970
There is an observation current in the world of acting: “Sincerity is the real crunch – when you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”
“The Genuine Original Imitation Fake,” DEWLine Newsletter, No 6, May-June, 1970, p 4
Quote #2266
Year: 1970
Many of the misconceptions about art, phony and phonetic, are rooted in the common illusion that the real is a faithful matching or repeat in one material of something that exists in another material. Picasso’s celebrated remark: “I always paint fakes”, or Renoir’s “I have painted about 1200 pictures and 2500 of them are in the U.S.A.” – remarks like these are mostly taken to be kidding. Even mass production has a basic component of sheer making, as well as faking.
“The Genuine Original IMIT/Routledgeation Fake,” DEWLine Newsletter, No 6, May-June, 1970, p 4
Quote #2267
Year: 1970
What Ellul notes about propaganda [that above all, it must be total] had been discovered earlier by Fred DeMara, “The Great Imposter” in the book of that title by Robert Crichton (Random House, 1959). “I am a superior sort of liar. I don’t tell any truth at all, so that my story has a unity of parts, a structural integrity and this way sounds more like the truth than truth itself.”
“The Genuine Original Imitation Fake,” DEW-Line Newsletter, No 6, May-June, 1970, p 7
Quote #2268
Year: 1970
Warfare and the welfare state have become almost interchangeable terms as we plunge ever deeper into the folds of the information environment.
“The Genuine Original IMIT/Routledgeation Fake,” DEWLine Newsletter, No 6, May-June 1970, p 4
Quote #2269
Year: 1970
The seer is naturally a blind man because in order to retrieve the deeper meanings he must forego some of the more superficial experience. The same dynamic works in naming products, or people, or processes. By playing up some facet and playing down others, whole worlds of consumer values are brought into play.
“The Genuine Original Imitation Fake,” DEW-Line Newsletter, No 6, May-June 1970, p 9
Quote #2270
Year: 1970
This deprivation of sense is a way of awakening forgotten or neglected senses, is the key to nonsense verses and to the whole world of verbal play initiated by the symbolist poets from Rimbaud to James Joyce.
“The Genuine Original Imitation Fake,” DEW-Line Newsletter, No 6, May-June 1970, p 9
Quote #2271
Year: 1970
In the world of labels the power of the word, or the letters, exerts all the magical effects of a mask. The word persona, the Roman name for the actor’s mask, indicated the fact that the Roman actor used his mask as a loud speaker, or public address system, presumably, the word has the force of per-sonaro, “the speak through.”
“The Genuine Original Imitation Fake,” DEW-Line Newsletter, No 6, May-June, 1970, p 11
Quote #2272
Year: 1970
All words have an appearance quite independent of their meanings. It is only the hieroglyuphic languages where the shape and meaning merge. Hidden, therefore, in all the shapes of our words are strange associations. For example, “look” spelled backwards is “cool” and “diaper” spelled backwards is “repaid” and “lap dog” is “god pal.” These reverse patterns affect us when we are not paying attention.
“The Genuine Original Imitation Fake,” DEW-Line Newsletter, May-June, 1970, p 4
Quote #2273
Year: 1970
Chapter: Language
Goldsmith observed of the famous actor David Garrick: “On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting. It was only when he was off the stage that he was acting.”
“The Genuine Original Imitation Fake,” DEW-Line Newsletter, No 6, May-June, 1970, p 5
Quote #2274
Year: 1970
The language which each of us speaks and shares in is an enormous corporate mask, the individual content of which is insignificant compared to the message of the mask, or medium itself. One becomes aware of this when attempting to speak a few words of Dutch or Danish or Chinese. To those people when one is in the other countries. The inability to put on the corporate mask of a language is as common as the inability to put on radio, movie, or TV images and the publics that accompany them.
“The Genuine Original Imitation Fake,” DEW-Line Newsletter, No 6, May-June, 1970, p 6
Quote #2275
Year: 1970
When a visitor stepped into an antique store, he asked: “What’s new?” His jocular query draws attention to the fact that we live in the age of the fake antique, which is itself a form of the replay. Is not “news” itself a replay of he newspaper medium of events that have occurred in some other medium, and does not this replay quality in reporting urge us to narrow the margin between the event and the replay? Does this not make us define news as “the latest”?
“At the Moment of Sputnik—” (1974) Typescript, p 10
Quote #2276
Year: 1974
Chapters: News | Replay
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