A dictionary of Marshall McLuhan’s quotations
Compiled by William Kuhns
©2026 Marshall McLuhan Estate
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Viewing chapter Reading (17 quotes)
It is the problem of translation of the auditory into the visual and back again, which is the process of writing and reading, that brings the interior monologue into existence, as can be observed in the study of pre-literate cultures today
"Joyce, Mallarmé and the Press", in The Sewanee Review, Vol.62, No.1, Jan-March (1954), p 40, reprinted in The Interior Landscape The Literary Criticism of Marshall McLuhan, (1969), p .7
Year: 1954
…reading is actually an activity of rapid guessing because any word has so many meanings, including the word “reading,” many many meanings, that to select one, in a context of other words, requires very rapid guessing. That's why a good reader tends to be a very quick decision-maker.
Monday Conference (1977), a TV appearance in Australia where McLuhan answered questions from the audience for one hour; transcript: 4:44
Year: 1977
Silent reading was impossible until the presses created the macadamized highways of print.
"Joyce, Mallarmé and the Press", in The Sewanee Review, Vol.62, No.1, Jan-March (1954), p 41, reprinted in The Interior Landscape The Literary Criticism of Marshall McLuhan, (1969), p 8.
Year: 1954
The publication of a poem consisted in reading or reciting it to a small audience
"Joyce, Mallarmé and the Press", in The Sewanee Review, Vol.62, No.1, Jan-March (1954), p 41, reprinted in The Interior Landscape The Literary Criticism of Marshall McLuhan, (1969), p 8.
Year: 1954
Eventually there were enough books to splinter the reading public into dozens of noncommunicating groups.
"Joyce, Mallarmé and the Press", in The Sewanee Review, Vol.62, No.1, Jan-March (1954), p 42, reprinted in The Interior Landscape The Literary Criticism of Marshall McLuhan, (1969), p 9
Year: 1954
Of course, it’s very difficult to teach a naked man how to read.
Opening line of a speech at a Brandeis University Conference in 1963; quoted by John Culkin, in “Marshall’s New York Adventure,” in MM The Man and His Message (1989), p 99
Year: 1963
Chapter:
Literacy
After all people don’t read books, they sample them. They read three or four pages in any book and say. “Gee, it’s great. Someday I’m going to read this book.”
“It Will Probably End the Motor Car” (1976), p 28
Year: 1976
There is a sense in which a magazine is a vortex of energy, a mask which the reader puts on in order to perceive a field of action that would otherwise be outside his ken. If a reader must put on a magazine as a mask or a pattern of energy in order to organize his perceptions, the contributors must also put on the public created by the magazine, creating a reciprocal and complementary action.
“Roles, masks and Performances” (1971), reprinted in McLuhan Unbound (2017), p 3
Year: 1971
Right now this means, for example, that we are going to insist that Johnny acquire the art of reading, if only because print is the matrix of Western industrial method in production, and print teaches consumer habits of sequential analysis and fragmentation of all motion into static units. Print teaches habits of privacy and self-reliance and initiative. It provides a massive visual panorama of the resources of our mother tongue which pre-literate people only knew by ear. In fact, print is not only access to our culture and technology, it is our culture and technology.
“What Fundamental Changes are Foreshadowed in the Prevailing patterns of Educational organization and Methods of Instruction by the Revolution in Electronics?” 1959, p 1
Year: 1959
Chapter:
Print
Of course Johnny must read. He must follow the lines of print. He must roll that hoop down the walk. He must roll his eyes in lineal, sequential fashion. We have only to proceed to engraft the old right-handedness on his new left-handedness in order to win our point. But in the meantime we shall have lost his attention, and he may be subdued, but he will be utterly confused.
“Electronic Revolution” 1959 speech, in Understanding Me (2003), p 3
Year: 1959
Chapter:
Satirist
[Of someone reading letters aloud] He said he felt impelled to put his fingers to his ears while reading aloud, so as not to violate the privacy of their letters. This is interesting testimony to the values of privacy fostered by the visual stress of phonetic writing .
Understanding Media, 1964, MIT/Routledge edition, p 78
Men of affairs – “practical” men as they like to call themselves – are so baffled by the events of this period that frequently they turn in desperation to gurus like McLuhan. (As, for instance, our Prime Minister [P.E. Trudeau] did at one point.) Instead of answers, which they badly need, they find the enigmas or poetry. With gurus and oracles it has always been thus.
“From Gurus We Always Get Enigmas,” by Robert Fulford, in Toronto Daily Star, September 25, 1971, p 57
Year: 1971
One positive benefit that has been the result of the Marxist mental squint is the growing regard which is given to ways in which moral and economic assumptions react upon educational standards and on the reading habits of a community.
Review of Poetry and the Modern World by David Daiches. Fleur de Lis. 1941, p 38
Year: 1941
Chapter:
Marx, Karl
The teaching of reading and literature; therefore, has now to assume the job of directing perception and of training judgment...
“What the Mass Media Mean for Teachers of English,” 1955, p 3
Year: 1955
Chapters:
Teaching | Training of Perception
...reading Professor Frye is a more satisfactory thing for most of Blake than reading Blake himself.
“Inside Blake and Hollywood”, in The Sewanee Review,, 1947, p 712
Year: 1947
To think of the mass audience as merely larger and more vulgar than the old reading public is a good example of the rear-view mirror vision of the world.
“Great Change-overs for you”, in Vogue, Vol. 148, No. 1, July 1st (1966), p 63
Year: 1966
To enjoy reading you must know what you are looking for.
Quoted by Derrick de Kerckhove in Who Was Marshall McLuhan? (1994), p 88
Year: 1994