A dictionary of Marshall McLuhan’s quotations

Compiled by William Kuhns
Β©2026 Marshall McLuhan Estate

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American Telephone and Telegraph alone greatly exceeds the capitalization of General Motors. The production and consumption of information, that is, is the main business of
Electronic Revolution: Revolutionary Effects of New Media”, (1959), speech reprinted in Understanding Me: Lectures and Interviews, (2003), p 5
Quote #2921
Year: 1959
We have become like the most primitive Paleolithic man, once global wanderers, but information gatherers rather than food gatherers. From now on the sources of food, wealth and life itself will be information.
β€œThe Agenbite of Outwit”, In Location Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, (1963), reprinted in Marshall McLuhan Essays Media Research: Technology Art Communication, (1997), p 124
Quote #2922
Year: 1963
Chapter: Hunters of Information
The field of οΏ½οΏ½information theory’ began by using the old hardware paradigm of transportation of data from point to point.
Laws of Media: The New Science with Eric McLuhan, (1988), p 111.
Quote #2923
Year: 1988
Chapter: Hardware / Software
The hijacker of a plane does not presume to operate the craft. He merely decides where it is to put down. So it is today with the very largest organizations. The larger the enterprise, the easier it is to shape its patterns and destinies, unknown to the occupants and 'owners'.
β€œThe Hijacking of Cities, Nations, Planets in the Age of Spaceship Earth,” Explorations insert in University of Toronto's Varsity Graduate, Number 30, Spring, 1971, p 110
Quote #2924
Year: 1971
Chapter: Management
The modalities of grammar, etymology and word-formation could be made to yield a complete account of the economic, social, and spiritual adventures of mankind. If geology could reconstruct the story of the earth from the inert strata of rock and clay, the scienza nuova could do much better with the living languages of men.
β€œJames Joyce Trivial and Quadrivial,” 1953, reprinted in The Interior Landscape (1969), p 24
Quote #2925
Year: 1953
Chapters: Language | Science
Man in the electronic age has no possible environment except the globe and no possible occupation except information-gathering. By simply moving information and brushing information against information, any medium whatever creates vast wealth. The richest corporation in the world, American Telephone and Telegraph, has only one function: moving information about. Simply by talking to one another, we create wealth. Any child watching a television program should be paid because he is creating wealth for the community. But this wealth is not money. Money is obsolete because it stores work (and work, as we have seen, is itself obsolete). In a work-less, non-specialist society money is useless. What you need is a credit card, which is information.
β€œThe Agenbite of Outwit”, In Location Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, (1963), p 121, reprinted in Marshall McLuhan Essays Media Research: Technology Art Communication, (1997), p 125
Quote #2926
Year: 1963
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.
β€œMr. Nixon and the Dropout Strategy” (1973), typescript, p 1
Quote #2927
Year: 1973
Chapters: Chiasmus, Flips, Reversals | Divided by Media | Hunters of Information

Drawn to McLuhan #10

Black-and-white illustrated diptych with a bold headline banner, featuring pen-and-ink style portraits of two men (labeled George Meredith and James Joyce) each with a speech bubble of quoted text and a caption giving their names, nationalities, and life dates.
β€œWhat he said of others was often true of himself.” On George Meredith: β€œHe is so wholly sui generis that neglect of him involves neglect of nothing else, implies no deficiency of taste, no literary limitation. He cannot be placed.” On James Joyce: β€œFor Joyce has solved numerous problems which science has not yet formulated as problems.”
Photorealistic image of a grand library hall with a sign reading "Robo-losophers," lined with curtained booths labeled with names of philosophers (Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Confucius, etc.), each containing a robotic/statue figure, while students converse in the aisle.
β€œThe means that are destroying our tradition, our culture, and values, could be used to preserve and sustain them.”
Color illustration of an oversized, glowing television set surrounded by a dense field of empty speech bubbles and broken eggshells, with small crowds of people gathered below on either side.
β€œThe advent of TV may carry us beyond speech altogether.”
Color cartoon illustration of a pilot and a woman eating at an airport cafΓ© table, the woman saying in a speech bubble that the pilot β€œsaid to the pilot, β€˜Knock knock’…”, with an airliner and ground crew visible through the window.
β€œOur time has discovered that there is a language of Forms and Gestures – a language which has its own grammar and syntax.”
Color cartoon illustration of scientists in lab coats dancing amid laboratory equipment, one exclaiming in a speech bubble about subatomic particles, in a particle physics lab set.
β€œScience and magic have married each other.”
Photorealistic image of an older man laughing heartily at the head of a seminar table, surrounded by smiling students, in front of a blackboard in a book-lined classroom.
β€œI want a career where I get to laugh a lot.”
Color illustration of an older, bespectacled man in a tweed jacket seated at a cluttered writing desk in a book-lined study, scratching his head while writing, with a copy of "Understanding Media" stacked nearby.
β€œI don’t pretend to understand my stuff. After all, my writing is very difficult.”
Color illustration of dejected, unemployed-looking people sitting on a city sidewalk holding cardboard signs ("MBA Was Useless," "College Degree $0 Return"), while a line of business-suited robots carrying briefcases walks past in the background.
β€œHow much more Know-How is needed to make human life obsolete?”
Color illustration of a bespectacled man in a suit with three overlapping, motion-blurred heads (as if spinning), pointing toward a spinning desk globe encircled by ribbons labeled "Global Village" and "Medium Is the Message."
β€œGlobes make my head spin. By the time I’ve located the place, they’ve changed the boundaries.”
Photo composite of two "hear no evil, see no evil" style classical marble busts (Plato covering his ears, Aristotle covering his eyes) beside a sepia-toned portrait photograph of an older man in a suit resting his chin on his hand, with a speech bubble of quoted text above them and name captions below.
β€œWhy has no one in history β€” not Plato, certainly not Aristotle, no philosopher, ever regarded our technologies grammatically, asking how they inflect on us?”
As automation takes hold, it becomes obvious that information is the crucial commodity, and that solid products are merely incidental to information movement.
Understanding Media (1964), MIT/Routledge edition, p 185
Quote #2928
Year: 1964
In the new electric Age of Information and programmed production, commodities themselves assume more the character of information.
Understanding Media (1964), MIT/Routledge edition, p 48
Let us keep in mind that the new reality is in the image and not behind it.
β€œThe Electronic Age: the Age of lmplosion” (1962), p 196
Quote #2929
Year: 1962
If we think of neolithic man as dedicated to the increase of his powers by tools and techniques that extended his physical being, we can designate the electronic age as the environmental extension, not of various parts of our bodies, but of the nervous system. Instead of affording a superior means of locomotion or transport, electricity moves information. Light and power become modes of information as much as information becomes a direct form of power and decision-making in all matters affecting merchandising and production.
β€˜β€Guaranteed Income in—” (1968), p 76
Quote #2930
Year: 1968
Credit ratings based upon the new data banking supersede conventional banking. Such "banking" is based on corporate and private promises.
Take Today with Barrington Nevitt, 1973, p 79
Quote #2931
Year: 1973
Whether it be recognized as radio or television or Telstar or the bomb, the new environment of mankind is scarcely β€œhardware” or physical so much as it is information and the configurations of codified data.
Locate source, from 1966
Quote #2932
Year: 1966
One characteristic that Telstar, the bomb and the computer have in common is that of enormous power related to puny hardware.
β€œA New Journey for the Magi” (1965), p 1; in Decisive Years (April 1965)
Quote #2933
Year: 1965
Chapter: Information Warfare
Wealth is already derived for the most part from the movement of information alone, and will increase in our time as the mere reflex of human chatter. That is why paid learning is long overdue.
The Electronic Age - The Age of Implosion, Mass Media in Canada, 1962, p.201,
Quote #2934
Year: 1962
…today advertising aims at creating the environmental dimension for each product. Information alone is now expected to do what the product did in previous times.
Guaranteed Income in the-- 1968, p 81
Quote #2935
Year: 1968
Commodities themselves assume more and more the character of information.
Understanding Media (1964), MIT/Routledge edition, p 48
Quote #2936
Year: 1964
The vast majority of contemporary information services and [forms of] knowledge are neither printed nor verbal. They are designs, models, processes in actual use.
The New Exec Role, unpublished 1970-71, p 1
Quote #2937
Year: 1970
From coin to paper currency, and from currency to credit card there is a steady progression toward commercial exchange as the movement of information itself.
Understanding Media (1964), MIT/Routledge edition, p 137
Quote #2938
Year: 1964
Whereas formerly a dollar bill carried the promise to pay the bearer a dollar in gold today/ the promise is to pay promises by means of another slip of paper.
β€œMedia and the Inflation Crowd”, 1973 p 7 of the original typescript
Quote #2939
Year: 1973
Actually, the durability of any building is the life of the mortgage. It doesn't matter what sort of materials it's made of.
Interview with J. Kirsch, September 13, 1976, p 1
Quote #2940
Year: 1976
The physical landscape of the earth was changed very quickly by the landscapes of the newspaper, even though the political scene has not yet caught up. The networks of news, trade and transport were one.
"Joyce, MallarmΓ© and the Press", in The Sewanee Review, Vol.62, No.1, Jan-March (1954), p 43-44, reprinted in The Interior Landscape The Literary Criticism of Marshall McLuhan, (1969), p 10
Quote #2941
Year: 1954
Chapters: Discontinuity | News
But the peculiar and abstract manipulation of information as a means of creating wealth is no longer a monopoly of the stockbroker.
Understanding Media, 1964, MIT/Routledge edition, p 354.
Quote #2942
Year: 1964
β€œThe dichotomy between information and entertainment has ended.
Two Aspects of the Information Revolution, 1962, p 8
Quote #2943
Year: 1962
Chapter: McLuhanisms & Zingers
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