A dictionary of Marshall McLuhan’s quotations

Compiled by William Kuhns
©2026 Marshall McLuhan Estate

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Viewing chapter Image (8 quotes)
Let us keep in mind that the new reality is in the image and not behind it.
Marshall McLuhan
“The Electronic Age -- the Age of lmplosion” (1962), p 196
Quote #2885
Year: 1962
Chapters: Dropout | Image | McLuhanisms & Zingers | Media
Yes, we must substitute an interest in the media for the previous interest in subjects. This is the logical answer to the fact that the media have substituted themselves for the older world. Even if we should wish to recover that older world we can do it only by an intensive study of the ways in which the media have swallowed it.
“The Post-Literate Man”, 1973, Cycles 7, p 232
Quote #2886
Year: 1973
Chapters: Consciousness | Individual | Media
In the TV image we have the supremacy of the blurred outline, itself the maximal incentive to growth and new "closure" or completion, especially for a consumer culture long related to the sharp visual values that had become separated from the other senses
Understanding Media, 1964, MIT/Routledge edition, p 321
Quote #2887
Year: 1964
Perhaps the effect [of media] is for the media to substitute for reality just in the degree to which they become virtuousos of realistic detail.
Counterblast (1969), p 125
Quote #2888
Year: 1969
Chapter: Media
[In a political TV debate] The image is what mattered, and anything that could hold the attention on the image was all that mattered from the point of view of the arrangers.
“TV as a Debating Medium” (1976), reprinted in Understanding Me (2003), p 258
Quote #2889
Year: 1976
Nixon, he was a hot character, because he had only a private image, he had no corporate image, he merely looked like Richard Nixon.
Quoted in Video, “Out of Orbit, the Life and Times of MM (1999), 17:04 in transcript
Quote #2890
Year: 1999
IT IS NOW EASIER AND MORE NATURAL TO ENVISAGE THE POPE CIRCULATING VIA A SMALL TRAILER OR HELICOPTER THAN TO MAINTAIN THE MASSIVE IMAGE OF THE ROMAN CURIA.
The McLuhan DEW-LINE, Vol 2, Nº 5, March-April 1970, p ???
Quote #2891
Year: 1970
The sculptural qualities of the image dim down the purely personal.
Counterblast (1969), p 145 (through the vanishing point))
Quote #2892
Year: 1969
Chapters: McLuhanisms & Zingers | Sculpture, Sculptural

Drawn to McLuhan #4

Color illustration of a tired-looking mother on a cluttered couch holding a baby, surrounded by several children of different ages, most of them absorbed in phones or the television rather than each other.
"We are not the true parents of our children."
Color illustration of a hand holding a wrinkled "Monthly Megabucks" alumni loan letter with a bold red "LOAN PAYMENT OVERDUE" stamp, spotlit against a black background.
"The trouble with a cheap specialized education is you never stop paying for it."
Mixed-media illustration of a pencil-sketched woman seen from behind looking into an ornate framed mirror; her reflection, rendered in full color, shows a polished professional alter-ego against a city skyline, beneath the caption "What AI Knows About You."
"The data banks know us better than we know ourselves."
Color illustration of a devastated, cracked cityscape with skyscrapers splitting apart and toppling into a flooded street beneath a smoky orange sky.
"The contained, the distinct, the separate – our Western legacy – are being replaced by the flowing, the unified, the fused."
Color comic illustration of Superman flying between two winged, haloed angels against a cloudy blue sky, visually likening him to a medieval angel.
"Superman is the comic strip brother of the medieval angels."
Color illustration of a street musician trio playing guitar, violin, and drum on a tree-lined urban path while a diverse crowd of people dance, cartwheel, and celebrate around them.
"Sound, in this new world of dance and song, is not for listening, it's for making."
Color comic-style illustration of a pilot and a woman having breakfast in an airport cafe overlooking the tarmac, where a ground crew member signals a parked jet with semaphore flags; a speech bubble reads "Weird. He just said to the pilot, 'Knock knock'..."
"If our new media constitute so complete a range of expressiveness as both to enhance and almost to supplant speech itself, then we will have moved into the period of post-literacy."
Color cartoon of scientists in lab coats dancing among physics laboratory equipment, with a speech bubble joking about subatomic particles "dancing," while two onlookers watch in surprise from the doorway.
"Science and magic have married each other."
Color illustration of a string quartet performing on a circular stage in an ornate domed concert hall; one of the four musicians is depicted as a metallic robot playing alongside the human performers, before an applauding crowd.
"Nothing is so human about us as our technology."
Color cartoon illustration of a female stand-up comedian performing on a small club stage under a "The Laugh Comedy" marquee, with an enthusiastic audience laughing, clapping, and cheering below her.
"Manslaughter and man's laughter are spelled the same."
Basically, the reason is that the mosaic mesh of the TV image compels so much active participation on the part of the viewer that he develops a nostalgia for pre-consumer ways and days.
Understanding Media, 1964, MIT/Routledge edition, p 23
Quote #2893
Year: 1964
Chapter: Participation
© The Estate of Marshall McLuhan