A dictionary of Marshall McLuhan’s quotations

Compiled by William Kuhns
©2026 Marshall McLuhan Estate

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Viewing chapter Organic (10 quotes)
Our whole cultural habitat, which we once viewed as a mere container of people, is being transformed by these media and by space satellites into a living organism, itself contained within a new macrocosm or connubium of a supraterrestrial nature.
“Playboy Interview: Marshall McLuhan: A Candid Conversation with the High Priest of Popcult and Metaphysician of Media.” By Eric Norden. Playboy Magazine, March (1969), p 70, reprinted in The Essential McLuhan (1995), p 258
Quote #5187
Year: 1969
Chapter: Predictions
Failure to understand the organic character of electric technology is evident in our continuing concern with the dangers of mechanizing the world.
Understanding Media, 1964, MIT/Routledge edition, p 248
Quote #5188
Year: 1964
The important thing is to realize that electric information systems are live environments in the full organic sense. They alter our feelings and sensibilities, especially when they are not attended to.
War & Peace in the Global Village with Quentin Fiore (1968), p 36
Quote #5189
Year: 1968
Chapters: Electric, Electronic | Environment
Organic interdependence means that disruption of any part of the organism can prove fatal to the whole. Every industry has had to "rethink through" (the awkwardness of this phrase betrays the painfulness of the process), function by function, its place in the economy. But automation forces not only industry and town planners, but government and even education, to come into some relation to social facts. 
Understanding Media (1964), MIT/Routledge edition, p 353 
Quote #5190
Year: 1964
Chapters: From Tribal to Literate | Hardware / Software | Today’s Transition
It becomes more clear each day that structure and design in all levels of human organization are becoming orchestral. Our new electric age no longer presents any specialized cultural gradient. Ours is the age of the zero-gradient in which all times and cultures are in a continuous dialogue. To be a participant in this dialogue is most satisfying.
“Autobiography,” an undated three-page typescript, from the early 1970s, p 2
Quote #5191
Year: 1970
Chapters: Future | Harmony | McLuhan on McLuhan | Predictions
You asked some time ago about Sigfried Giedion. He comes to mind now because of his conscious exploitation of “Space-Time” metaphors in architectural history. It is astonishing how helpful and how crippling a big unconscious metaphor can be in directing the thoughts of whole periods of history. I mean such things as "organism" in Rousseau. Yet how different a concept of organism from that of the sixteenth century when it was hierarchical, or of the 19th when it was animal. I sometimes feel that such a notion of organism got into the surging rhythm of [Tolstoy's] "War and Peace" in such a way as to create the psychological reality of cinema before the mechanical fact. Curiously, the Greeks invented "organic" as a metaphor from "mechanic". Your work shows a constant awareness of the nearness of these supposed opposites, I am fully aware.
“Letter to Wyndham Lewis” (October 26, 1943), in Letters of Marshall McLuhan (1987), p 136
Quote #5192
Year: 1943
Chapter: Giedion, Sigfried
Automation, being electric, confers on the production process an organic, rather than a mechanical, character. Production is now to be assimilated to the growth process whether it be of Cadillacs or cornflakes. But qualities higher than those of the traditional craftsmen are needed in electro-organic production.
“Two Aspects of the Communication Revolution” (1962), p 8
Quote #5193
Year: 1962

Drawn to McLuhan #5

Illustration of a smartphone whose screen displays a man in business attire curled into a cramped fetal position inside the device.
"New technology breeds new man."
Illustrated procession of warriors and soldiers through history — a Native American fighter, Roman legionaries, a medieval knight, WWI/WWII infantry, a modern rifle-armed soldier, a futuristic armored trooper, and an astronaut — set against a sky shifting from fire to outer space.
"Every new technology necessitates a new war."
Illustration of a giant boot-shaped prison labeled "Section 7" and "Processing," guarded by an armed soldier, with a long line of people below all staring down at their smartphones.
"Today the tyrant rules not by club or fist, but ... he shepherds his flocks in the ways of utility and comfort."
Illustration of a young man and woman riding old-fashioned bicycles through a swirling, disorienting vortex surrounded by crumbling buildings, uprooted trees, and floating debris, with a torn sign reading "...cade de l'avenir."
"Our confused efforts to re-establish goals, habits, attitudes, and the sense of security they bring has become the main order of business."
Illustrated procession of warriors and soldiers through history — a Native American fighter, Roman legionaries, a medieval knight, WWI/WWII infantry, a modern rifle-armed soldier, a futuristic armored trooper, and an astronaut — set against a sky shifting from fire to outer space.
"We put on our technology as evolutionary clothing."
Illustration of a diverse group of pedestrians on a city sidewalk lined with a cafe and bookstore, most wearing headphones or earbuds and looking at their phones near a crosswalk.
"We can musically harmonize our lives to a fantastic degree. And we are headed that way."
Cartoon illustration of an awards-ceremony stage with a banner reading "This Year's Man of Distinction," where a crowd of identically dressed men in black tuxedos jostle forward to receive the same trophy from a smiling recipient.
"[We can expect] less and less distinction for more and more men of distinction."
Photo-style graphic of a smartphone displaying the YouTube logo (red play button and wordmark) centered against a pink-to-orange gradient background.
"[As we retribalize, we're certain to build] a new tribal encyclopedia of auditory incantation."
This designation of the physical properties of acoustic space concurs with the ancient Neoplatonic notions of God. The Logos idea of the Timaeus, or of the ancient world, East and West, took resonance for granted as the bond of being and the natural liaison between human speech and the entire physical world. It was resonance and the “logistics” of the Word that ensured to humanist studies absolute scientific priority to Greek and Roman alike – to mention only the Western world. It is this idea of unity in all knowledge and being that has suddenly returned to the Western world through such developments as quantum mechanics.
“The Man Who Came to Listen” with Barrington Nevitt, in Peter Drucker (1970), p 35
Quote #5194
Year: 1970
By electricity, we everywhere resume person-to-person relations as if on the smallest village scale. It is relation in depth, and without delegation of function or powers. The organic everywhere supplants the mechanical.
Understanding Media, 1964, MIT/Routledge edition, pp 255-256
Quote #5195
Year: 1964
Chapter: Global Village
Americans are alone on this planet in going outside for privacy and inside for community. All other peoples awhatever, before and since, have gone and now go outside for community and inside for privacy. It is to this pattern of relation to space and to one another that has permitted North Americans to avoid class structure such as characterize all other people.
“Letter to Henry Ford II” (May 23, 1972), in Letters of Marshall McLuhan (1987), p
Quote #5196
Year: 1972
Chapter: Outside to be Alone
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