A dictionary of Marshall McLuhan’s quotations

Compiled by William Kuhns
Β©2026 Marshall McLuhan Estate

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Viewing chapter Telephone (25 quotes)
With the telegraph and after we enter the world of interdependence and inter-action, in which no medium has its meaning alone and no product or advertisement has its meaning or use by itself.
American Marketing Association speech, 1961, published transcript, p 7
Quote #6710
Year: 1961
Chapter: Media Reprocess Media
It was the telephone, paradoxically, that sped the commercial adoption of the typewriter. The phrase β€œsend me a memo on that,” repeated into millions of phones daily, helped to create the huge expansion of the typist function.
Understanding Media (1964), MIT/Routledge edition. p 262
Quote #6711
Year: 1964
Chapter: Typewriter
Pyramids of paperwork rise on the basis of a small telephone network inside a single business. Like the typewriter, the telephone fuses functions, enabling the call-girl, for example, to be her own procurer and madam.
Understanding Media, 1964, MIT/Routledge edition, p 263
Quote #6712
Year: 1964
β€œThe typewriter, with regard to the poet or novelist, comes very close to the promise of electronic music, insofar as it compresses or unifies the various jobs of poetic composition and publication.
Understanding Media, 1964, MIT/Routledge edition, p 264
Quote #6713
Year: 1964
Chapter: Typewriter
Seated at the typewriter , the poet, much in the manner of the jazz musician, has the experience of performance as composition.
Understanding Media, 1964, MIT/Routledge edition, p 260
Quote #6714
Year: 1964
Chapter: Typewriter
The telephone and related electrical instruments have rendered the familiar organization patterns as obsolete as the assembly line.
β€œPopular / Mass Culture,” 1960 speech, in Understanding Me (2003), p 18
Quote #6715
Year: 1960
The same principle obtains on the telephone as compared with radio. The auditory image of the telephone is of low definition. It elicits maximal attention and cannot be used as background. All the senses rally to strengthen the weak sound of the phone.
The Role of New Media in Social Change, 1964, in McL: Man and His Message, 1989, p 34
Quote #6716
Year: 1964

Drawn to McLuhan #2

Two-panel comic illustration of a boxing match: a humanoid figure made of tumbling alphabet letters wearing "BRECE" shorts faces off against a muscular boxer with a smartphone for a head, under a "LITERACY VS ELECTRONIC" ring sign; in the second panel the smartphone boxer knocks the letter-man apart with a "K.O." punch.
β€œIt may even prove to be the case that the entire tradition of phonetic writing, which is co-extensive with our Western world and the Graeco-Roman tradition, cannot sustain the electronic impact.”
Illustrated period scene of a man in early-1900s suit and cap stepping into a Ford Model T outside the "Biograph Theatre" marquee advertising "The Artful Dodger," with a thought bubble above showing rows of parked cars at an outdoor movie screening.
β€œNew means create new goals.”
Illustrated interior of a rustic coffee shop with several patrons seated separately, each connected by small thought-bubble trails to one large shared blank thought bubble overhead, suggesting wordless, intuitive communication.
β€œThe future of language presents the possibility of a world without words, a wordless, intuitive world, like a technological extension of the action of consciousness.”
Illustration set in a lush jungle showing a feather-adorned Indigenous tribesman facing a translucent glowing green humanoid figure whose body is composed of streaming binary code.
β€œThe new electronic man and pre-literate man see eye to eye.”
Stylized line-art illustration of an elevated highway with a bright yellow central lane sweeping up into a sharp architectural peak, flanked by a modern city skyline of glass skyscrapers.
β€œThe road is our major architectural form.”
Illustration of a cluttered living room where a mother holds a baby on a couch surrounded by several children, most staring blankly at an unseen glowing television screen while a teenager scrolls a phone.
β€œWe are not the true parents of our children.”
Illustrated lineup of warriors and soldiers spanning history left to right β€” an Indigenous fighter, Roman legionaries, a medieval knight, WWI and modern soldiers, a futuristic armored figure, and an astronaut on the moon β€” set against a backdrop of fire, smoke, and space.
β€œWe put on our technology as evolutionary clothing.”
Comic-style illustration of a robed orator gesturing dramatically from a pedestal, his speech rendered as a jumbled speech bubble of scrambled Greek letters, while an assistant arranges the same letters into ordered puzzle pieces spelling Greek words like "ΑΑΕ΀Η" and "Ξ”Ξ™ΞšΞ‘Ξ™ΞŸΞ£Ξ₯ΝΗ" on a scroll.
β€œWriting is the spatialization of thought.”
The YouTube logo: a red rounded rectangle with a white play-button triangle beside the black "YouTube" wordmark on a black background.
[With electronic media, we are building] β€œβ€¦a new tribal encyclopedia of auditory incantation”
Were we to teach our math and physics by telephone, even a highly literate and abstract Westerner could eventually compete with the European physicists.
Understanding Media (1964) MIT/Routledge edition, p 267
Quote #6717
Year: 1964
Chapters: Teaching | Untapped Potentials
The word "telephone" came into existence in 1840, before Alexander Graham Bell was born. It was used to describe a device made to convey musical notes through wooden rods.
Understanding Media (1964) MIT/Routledge edition, p 269
Quote #6718
Year: 1964
Since the telephone has become a normal feature of our environment, the old red light distinct has disappeared. Centralism has given way to decentralized operation, as in management, and with the same consequences for the personnel involved. That is to say, the call girl must be, if not cultured, at least at home in a variety of social roles.
β€œEffects of Improvements of—” (1960), p 568
Quote #6719
Year: 1960
The English dislike the telephone so much that they substitute numerous mail deliveries for it. The Russians use the telephone for a status symbol, like the alarm clock worn by tribal chiefs as an article of attire in Africa.
Understanding Media (1964), MIT/Routledge edition, p 214
Quote #6720
Year: 1964
β€œReal” is an idea borrowed from the visual world. The word β€œphony” – which means β€œunreal” in English slang – originally meant β€œas unreal as a telephone conversation.” In the 1920 dictionary, that’s what β€œphony” meant.
β€œI Never Study—” (1978)
Quote #6721
Year: 1978
Chapter: Space
On the telephone only the authority of knowledge will work.
β€œVideo: the World Becomes a Village” (1965)
Quote #6722
Year: 1965
Chapter: Authority of Knowledge
If I miss you on the telephone, my theme is this: The peculiar attitudes of wild animals to enclosed spaces, i.e., their power to identify with the space as if it were an extension of themselves in the style of β€œclothing.” This seems to apply even to their keepers. It was a form of behavior that is reported by Frankel of the Jews in the death camps. Why will caged lions refuse to leave these spaces when the gates are left open? Jack Paar tells me that he could not even induce them to leave by putting food outside the cage.
Letter to Edward T. Hall, June 23, 1969 [not in Letters]
Quote #6723
Year: 1969
The best medium for teaching language is the telephone. People don’t know that. Because on the telephone you have to give your total attention. Otherwise, you get nothing.
β€œA Conversation with Marshall McLuhan” (1977), p 60
Quote #6724
Year: 1977
The absence of image on the telephone is a great big positive potential of that medium which has never been tapped.
Recorded Talk with Eric Goldman, Princeton University, 1966, transcript: 19:30
Quote #6725
Year: 1966
Why does a phone ringing on the stage create instant tension? Why is that tension so very much less for an unanswered phone in a movie scene? The answer to all these questions is that the phone is a participant form that demands a partner, with all the intensity of electric polarity.
Understanding Media (1964), MIT/Routledge edition, p 268
Quote #6726
Year: 1964
The American newspaperman in large degree assembles his stories and processes his data by telephone because of the speed and immediacy of the oral process. OIur popular press is a new approximation to the grapevine.
Understanding Media (1964), MIT/Routledge edition, p 214
Quote #6727
Year: 1964
[A tetrad] Take the telephone. It enhances the speed of the human voice; it causes the body as hardware to become obsolescent, retrieves telepathy (ESP, mysticism, the occult) and at last flips into the group voice or omni presence,,, you know, the conference call.
Bruce Powers Interview (1979); unpublished transcript, p 15
Quote #6728
Year: 1979
Chapters: Body | Dropout | Laws of Media | Living Unity | Occult
The child and the teenager understand the telephone, embracing the cord and the ear-mike as if they were beloved pets.
Understanding Media (1964), MIT/Routledge edition, p 266
Quote #6729
Year: 1964
The auditory image of the telephone is of low definition. It elicits maximum attention and cannot be used as background. All the senses rally to strengthen the weak sound of the phone. We even feel the need to be kinetically involved via doodling or pacing. And whereas we complete the strong auditory image of radio by visualizing, we only slightly visualize on the phone.
β€œThe Role of the New Media—” (1964), p 4
Quote #6730
Year: 1964
Chapter: Senses
Radio, in contrast to the telephone permits the listener to fill in a good deal of visual imagery. The radio-announcer or disc jockey stands out loud and clear, while the voice on the telephone resonates in isolation from the visual sense. Nobody ever wrote a lament about: β€œAll alone by the radio” but β€œAll alone by the telephone” is a classic of the twenties that is a resounding prophecy of high-rise living in the present time.
β€œPutting on the Media” (1971), p 2
Quote #6731
Year: 1971
…psychiatrists…report that neurotic children lose all neurotic symptoms when telephoning…
UM MIT/ROUTLEDGE, p 273
Quote #6732
What we call β€œthe French phone,” the union of mouthpiece and earphone in a single instrument, is a significant indication of the French liaison of the senses that English-speaking people keep firmly separate.
Understanding Media (1964), MIT/Routledge edition, p 266
Quote #6733
Year: 1964
The very nature of the telephone, as all electric media, is to compress and unify that which had previously been divided and specialized. Only the β€œauthority of knowledge” works by telephone because of the speed that creates a total an inclusive field of relations.
Understanding Media (1964), MIT/Routledge edition, p 277
Quote #6734
Year: 1964
Chapters: Authority of Knowledge | Media Reprocess Media
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