A dictionary of Marshall McLuhan’s quotations

Compiled by William Kuhns
©2026 Marshall McLuhan Estate

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Viewing chapter Trudeau, Pierre Elliott (12 quotes)
Marshall’s life and work increased my sense of pride in being a Canadian. His crackling mind provided me with much pleasure and many lasting insights. His work, I am sure, will live on to challenge thoughtful men and women of future generations.
Pierre Elliott Trudeau
in a letter to Corinne McLuhan of January 7, 1981, a week after McLuhan’s death on Dec. 31, 1980,, reproduced in Been Hoping We Might Meet Again: Letters of Marshall McLuhan and Pierre Elliott Trudeau, edited by Elaine Kahn, 2019, p 149
Quote #7123
Year: 1981
Chapter: Trudeau, Pierre Elliott
The unconscious is in danger of getting lost and becoming submerged in the modern world. Semi-conscious moments are very valuable.
Untitled, undated sheet of one-liners sent by MM to Gerald Feigen, circa 1970
Quote #7136
Year: 1970
Chapter: Truth
You know, the reason Trudeau is so successful is that he has the name of a Frenchman, the mind of an Englishman, and the face of an Indian.
Quoted by Tom Wolfe in his speech at the McLuhan Conference, Fordham University, 1999
Quote #7124
Year: 1999
The story of Pierre Trudeau is the story of the Man in the Mask. That is why he came into his own with TV.
Review of P.E. Trudeau’s Federalism and the French Canadians. NYTimes, November 17, 1968
Quote #7125
Year: 1968
May I venture to suggest an approach to the women’s lib matter? Women are less specialized than men, and long accustomed to adapting to a variety of roles. In our new instant information environment, most men who have been accustomed to specialized jobs and functions must now switch from role to role in the course of a day. In the big hierarchies this creates extreme discomfort and dismay and it is increasingly obvious that women could perform many of these functions better than men.
Letter to Pierre Elliott, June 13, 1974
Quote #7126
Year: 1974
“McLuhan had the most to say about the unconscious than anyone since Freud.”
Tom Wolfe
Quote #7127
You are the only political image of our time able to use the TV medium without being forced to become a tribal buffoon or cartoon like De Gaulle. All the other political figures of the Western world are merely faded photographs on the TV medium.
Letter to Pierre Elliott Trudeau, in Letters of Marshall McLuhan (1987) p 362
Quote #7128
Year: 1987
The very cool corporate mask that is your major political asset goes naturally with processing of problems in dialogue rather than in the production of packaged answers.
Letter to Pierre Elliott Trudeau, January 24,1969, in Letters, 1987, p 362
Quote #7129
Year: 1969
In a word, there is a widespread assumption that your arrogance exists in merely occupying your present role. That is, it has nothing to do with your personal image but rather with your corporate role.
Letter to Pierre Elliott Trudeau, February 12, 1973, in Letters, 1987, p 470
Quote #7130
Year: 1973

Drawn to McLuhan #9

Vintage-style cartoon illustration of a wild-eyed man in a red suit and hat running off the edge of a cliff while reading an open book and swinging a butterfly net at a monarch butterfly just out of reach.
“The specialist is one who never makes small mistakes while moving toward the grand fallacy.”
Photograph of a museum gallery where two visitors view a large grid of nine framed screens/photographs depicting a lush green forest, arranged edge-to-edge on a white wall.
“The new media are not bridges between man and nature, they are nature.”
Illustrated cartoon of a man in a suit trapped and falling through the neck of a giant hourglass, being funneled through a glowing smartphone into a stream of binary code below, set against an aged newspaper-page background.
“The more that is recorded about each one of us in the data banks, the less we exist.”
Illustrated drawing of an anxious-looking woman biting a pencil while standing in a voting booth with curtains, other voters visible blurred in the background.
“The ballot box, for example, is the product of literate Western culture—a hot box in a cool world—and thus obsolescent. The tribal will is consensually expressed through the simultaneous interplay of all members of a community that is deeply interrelated and involved, and would thus consider the casting of a ‘private’ ballot in a shrouded polling booth a ludicrous anachronism.”
Weathered street-art photograph of three life-size paper cutout figures pasted on a green wooden wall, each wearing everyday clothing but with a motor-scooter front end/headlight in place of a head.
“People really do think of themselves as specialized machines nowadays. ‘That’s just my speed’ is a most revealing remark.”
Illustrated cartoon of a man sitting hunched before a panel of stern, seated academics at a curved tribunal table in a book-lined hall, with one panelist pointing accusingly as a large speech-bubble text looms overhead.
[In a 1976 letter to a student friend] “In passing, you mention that the moment of judgment would be a judgment by one's peers. This is indeed a terrifying thought.”
Illustrated cartoon of an army of angry, weapon-wielding question-mark characters storming a castle with ladders and axes, while a line of academics in caps and gowns holding open books stands defending the wall.
“Knowledge is a bigger obstacle to problem-solving than ignorance.”
Split illustration showing a man livestreaming from a home office on one side, connected across a globe by a glowing arc to a group of friends watching him on a laptop at an outdoor Paris cafe with the Eiffel Tower visible on the other side.
“If you are moving at the speed of light, you are already there.”
Illustrated comic panel of an older man in a brown tweed jacket and glasses (Marshall McLuhan) gesturing while speaking to a bearded interviewer holding a notebook and tape recorder, seated in a book-lined study with a globe nearby.
Illustrated cartoon of Marshall McLuhan in a suit, surfing on a board reading "The Medium Is the Message" atop a giant wave made of books, ancient Greek philosophers, and 20th-century pop-culture icons (Charlie Brown, Superman, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis, the Beatles) surging around him.
“Control over change would seem to consist in moving with it but ahead of it.”
As soon as you "play it straight", the Wasp public feels abused, since it alone has the right to assume the mask of serious corporate power.
Letter to Pierre Elliott Trudeau, February 12, (1973), in Letters, (1987), p 469
Quote #7131
Year: 1973
[Of P.E. Trudeau] His image is all that matters. His politics have no consequences whatsoever. His image is all that remains. When he moves he changes his ground, his changes his images. Here in Toronto he is very different from being in Moscow. The game is different. Every time you move to a new ball-park it is a different ball-game.
You’ll change the rules.
J.P.M. van Santen Interview, Toronto, October 25, (1972), Transcript p 5
Quote #7132
Year: 1972
Asked, “Aren’t you some kind of a communist?” Pierre Trudeau replied, “No, I’m a canoeist.
Culture Is Our Business (1970), p 24
Quote #7133
Year: 1970
I have always felt that one of Canada’s great assets was it being a kind of “backwater”. Now having been totally involved in current trends it has been able to enjoy a flexibility that is rare.
Letter to P.E. Trudeau, April 16, (1968), cited in, Been Hoping We Might Meet Again, edited by Elaine Kahn, (2019). p 51
Quote #7134
Year: 1968
Chapter: Canada
THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE YOU FREE Herbert Marshall McLuhan The inscription on Marshall McLuhan’s tombstone: Holy Cross Cemetery, Thornhill, Ontario.
JULY 21, 1911 – December 31, 1980
Quote #7135
Year: 1911
Chapter: Truth
© The Estate of Marshall McLuhan