A dictionary of Marshall McLuhan’s quotations

Compiled by William Kuhns
©2026 Marshall McLuhan Estate

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Viewing chapter He’s Doubtful (15 quotes)
Harnessing the Tennessee, Missouri or Mississippi is kid stuff compared to curbing the movie, press, or television to human ends. The wild broncos of technological culture have yet to find their busters or masters. They have only found their P.T. Barnums.
“Media Log” (1954), reprinted in Explorations 4 (February 1955), p 54
Quote #2642
Year: 1954
Chapters: Anticipating Change | Mastering Technology
If we had the slightest consciousness of social responsibility, instead of just a sort of private subconscious totally inadequate to our technology, we would teach our children in our schools how to protect themselves against media fallout and advertising fallout.
Audio recording of a McLuhan passage used in an unidentified radio interview with Barrington Nevitt and Father John Culkin, S.J., shortly after the death and funeral of Marshall McLuhan, January, 1981, Transcript, p 9
Quote #2643
Year: 1981
Chapters: Education | Media Education
The machine is power. And practical politics mean quite simply that the machine must assume increasingly its most powerful form. The shape and rational form of man is now irrelevant. The will of all society has persisted in this direction for more than a century. Enthusiastic abdication on behalf of the machine. Eager embrace of man when deloused of his humanity by technics. That is the impatient wish, the wider hope embedded in the Luce publications [Time, Life, and Fortune] examined here.
“The Psychopathology of ‘Time’ and “Life’ (1949), reprinted in The Scene Before You (1955), p 159
Quote #2644
Year: 1949
Chapters: Human Scale | Technology | Tools We Shape, Reshape Us
"I guess what concerns me the most about the quality of life in the Electronic Age," [McLuhan] summarized, "is the total loss of any human depth. Man simply will not have time for it. In the future a friend will be somebody with whom you had an enjoyable conversation on a plane."
Spoken to interviewer Barbara Rowes in “Techno-Kids,” Omni, vol 5 number 8, May (1983)
Quote #2645
Year: 1983
Chapter: Warnings
[Discussing the possibility of the Church “abandoning itself without question to electric mentality”]
Technically speaking, the age in which we live is certainly favourable to an Antichrist. Just think: each person can instantly be tuned to a “new Christ” and mistake him for the real Christ. At such times it becomes crucial to hear properly and to tune yourself in to the right frequency.
From “Tomorrow’s Church: Fourth Conversation with Pierre Babin” In The Medium and the Light (1999), p. 209
Quote #2646
Year: 1999
Chapters: Catholic Church | Warnings
The programming of computers calls for levels of human awareness about media and ourselves such as we do not yet possess.
“The Care and Feeding of Communication Innovation”, Conference on 8mm Sound Film and Education Dinner Speech, Teachers College, Columbia University, November 8, 1961, p 4
Quote #2647
Year: 1961
Chapters: Advice | Computer | Masks | Warnings
That the entire planet should become show business on a twenty-four-hour basis is not only inevitable now, but it creates "challenges" for all levels of the establishment on a scale that will gradually obliterate consciousness.
“A Peculiar War to Fight”, Letter to R.J. Leuver (1969), in The Medium and the Light, (1999), p 91
Quote #2648
Year: 1969
Chapters: Anticipating Change | Warnings

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?”
Technology is an abstract tyrant that carries its ravages into deeper recesses of the psyche than did the sabre-toothed tiger or the grizzly bear.
The Mechanical Bride, 1951, p 4
Quote #2649
Year: 1951
Chapters: McLuhanisms & Zingers | Technology | Tools We Shape, Reshape Us
[Under retribalizing conditions] The difference between factitious and fictitious tends to dissolve.
“Information Hunt Looms Big” (1967), p 5
Quote #2650
Year: 1967
Chapters: Dropout | Fake | Living Unity | McLuhanisms & Zingers | Myth, Mythic | Retribalizing
I have said (and I hope I am wrong) at various times that we ought to expect a steady trend toward irrational tribal behavior in North America, as our youngsters get saturated with the all-at-once auditory experience of our new media. Such tribal experience was still intact and available to the Jap and the German. But for us to retribalize would be quite a different matter. And in the global village created by our electronics there would, of course, be room for only one tribe — the human family itself.
Attribution?
Quote #2651
Chapters: Retribalizing | Warnings
Source: https://mcluhansnewsciences.com/mcluhan/2020/05/mcluhan-naeb-presentation-9-23-59/
In purely realistic terms, I feel that the associated power of specialist and vested interest of many kinds definitely insures that we shall fail to meet any and every challenge that is offered to us in the electronic age. Why should we understand new media when no generation of the Western past has understood all media?
“The New Criticism and the New Media”, in NAEB Report on Understanding New Media, June (1960), p 4
Quote #2652
Year: 1960
"The drugs people are taking," he [McLuhan] said of widespread cocaine use, "are a temporary measure to speed up natural responses. Once people have interiorized electronic communication, they will no longer need the drugs. They will naturally be on the electronic wavelength. "I guess what concerns me the most about the quality of life in the Electronic Age," he summarized, "is the total loss of any human depth. Man simply will not have time for it. In the future a friend will be somebody with whom you had an enjoyable conversation on a plane."
As spoken to interviewer Barbara Rowes in “Techno-Kids,” Omni, vol 5 number 8, May (1983)
Quote #2653
Year: 1983
Chapters: Dropout | Living Unity | Warnings | Drugs
[When discussing the possibility of the Church “abandoning itself without question to electric mentality”]

Technically speaking, the age in which we live is certainly favourable to an Antichrist. Just think: each person can instantly be tuned to a “new Christ” and mistake him for the real Christ. At such times it becomes crucial to hear properly and to tune yourself in to the right frequency.

How are you to argue with people who insist on sticking their heads in the invisible teeth of technology, calling the whole thing freedom?
Quoted in Hacking the Future by Arthur and Marilouise Kroker (1996), p 8
Quote #2654
Year: 1996
Chapters: Catholic Church | Dropout | Living Unity | Warnings
The future of the book raises the question of whether men can ever program their corporate social lives in accordance with any civilized pattern by any other means than that of the printed book.
“The Future of the Book” (1972), in Understanding Me, (2003), p 176
Quote #2655
Year: 1972
Chapters: Future | Predictions | Today’s Transition
Left handers are the only people in the right mind.
Quoted by Tom Cooper in Wisdom Weavers (2025)
Quote #2656
Year: 2025
Chapter: McLuhan on McLuhan
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