A dictionary of Marshall McLuhan’s quotations
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Viewing chapter Values & Value Judgments (40 quotes)
“[McLuhan regarded] the Arts as a storehouse of values.”
W.T. Easterbrook
Minutes of the 5th “Values Symposium” convened by W.T. Easterbrook, University of Toronto, 1949, quoted in Thomas W. Cooper’s dissertation, Pioneers in Communication: The Lives and Thought of Harold Innis and Marshall McLuhan, University of Toronto, 1979, p 176
Year: 1949
Chapter:
Values & Value Judgments
To investigate this question with respect to alphabetic and typographic culture is the task of the present book. And it is today a quest which cannot but be undertaken in the light of new technologies which deeply affect the traditional operation and achieved values of alphabetic literacy and typographic culture.
The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man, (1962), p 7
Year: 1962
It is wise to withhold all value judgments when studying these media matters, since their effects are not capable of being isolated.
Understanding Media (1964), MIT/Routledge edition, p 315
Year: 1964
Chapters:
Advice | Media Study
However, the older world of roles had lingered on as a ghost just as after a century of electricity the West still feels the presence of the older values of literacy and privacy and separateness.
The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man, (1962), p 14
Year: 1962
Chapter:
Between Two Ages
There is here no question of values or preferences. It is necessary, however, for any other kind of understanding to know why "primitive" drawing is two-dimensional, whereas the drawing and painting of literate man tends towards perspective.
The Gutenberg Galaxy : The Making of Typographic Man (1962), p 43
Year: 1962
Instead of using Seltman's unique observations about Greek culture as a take-off strip for the medieval manuscript culture, I am going to enlarge the present mosaic of exhibits a little more. Before approaching the five centuries of the Gutenberg galaxy, it will be well to note how profoundly indifferent are non-literate men to visual values in the organization of perception and experience.
The Gutenberg Galaxy : The Making of Typographic Man (1962), pp 64-65
Year: 1962
Nothing is more destructive of the true values of primeval art than the glare of electric light in this realm of eternal night.
The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (1962), p 65
Year: 1962
That is, the recovery of primitive organic values in art and architecture is the central technological pressure of our time.
The Gutenberg Galaxy : The Making of Typographic Man (1962), p 67
Year: 1962
Chapter:
Today’s Transition
Drawn to McLuhan #6
Anybody who spends his time screaming about values in our modern world is not a serious character. You might as well start screaming about a house that’s burning down, shouting, “This is not the act of a serious man!” When your old world is collapsing and everything is changing at a furious pitch, to start announcing your preferences for old values is not the act of a serious person. This is frivolous, fatuous. If you were to knock on the door of one of these critics and say “Sir, there are flames leaping out of your roof, your house is burning,” under these conditions he would then say to you, “That's a very interesting point of view. I personally couldn't disagree with you more.” That's all these critics arc saying. Their house is burning and they're saying, “Don’t you have any sense of values, simply telling people about fire when you should be thinking about the serious content, the noble works of the mind?” Value is irrelevant.
MARSHALL MCLUHAN AND G. B, STERN INTERVIEW, in McLuhan Hot and Cool (1967), p 278
Year: 1967
Chapter:
Hostility to McLuhan
Yet Gerard Manley Hopkins was crusading for tactile stress in word use and for vigorous oral poetry exactly at the time that Cezanne was giving tactile values to the retinal impression.
The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (1962), p 83
Year: 1962
Moreover, we begin to know what to expect of print technology in the diminution of oral qualities. And today in the electronic age we can understand why there should be a great diminishing of the special qualities of print culture, and a revival of oral and auditory values in verbal organization.
The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (1962), p 108
Year: 1962
The literate liberal is convinced that all real values are private, personal, individual
The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man, (1962), p 157
Year: 1962
It is not here a question of values but rather of the need to understand how the achievements of the Renaissance were associated with the separation of functions and senses.
The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man, (1962), p 179
Year: 1962
Whereas Rousseau in the highly civilized society of the eighteenth century had come to value the integral qualities of primitive life, we have come to understand in detail the operation of those factors that enable civilized values to permeate oral situations.
“The Marfleet Lectures” , March 16-17 (1967),p 115, reprinted in Understanding Me (2003), p 103
Year: 1967
The reduction of tactile quality in life and language is ever the mark of refinement. And it was not till the Pre-Raphaelites and Hopkins that a deliberate campaign for Saxon tactile values in language was to begin in English.
The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man, (1962), p 240
Year: 1962
Radical changes of identity happening in very sudden, brief intervals of time have proved more deadly and destructive to human values than were wars fought with hardware weapons.
“Man and Media,” lecture delivered at York University, Toronto, (1979), in Understanding Me (2003), p 286
Year: 1979
Chapters:
Anticipating Change | Dropout | Identity | Living Unity | McLuhanisms & Zingers | Violence | Warnings
In the electric age the alteration of human identity by new service environments of information have left whole populations without personal or community values to a degree that far exceeds the effects of food and fuel and energy shortages
“Man and Media,” lecture delivered at York University, Toronto (1979), in Understanding Me (2003), p 286
Year: 1979
It just means they have completely different characteristics, and the values that are secreted by or brought to us by either form are not necessarily compatible any more
Man and Media,” lecture delivered at York University, Toronto, (1979), in Understanding Me (2003), p 297
Year: 1979
Technology is something we did to ourselves. Why become indignant or enthusiastic about a wheel or a telegraph?
First Lecture at Fordham University (1967) in Understanding Me (2003) pp 142-143
Year: 1967
Chapter:
McLuhanisms & Zingers
To express moral caution and alarm concerning such matters is as efficacious as the screech of a chicken whose neck has been laid on the chopping block.”
“The Crack in the Rear View Mirror,” McGill Journal of Education, vol 1, no 1, 1966, p 3
Year: 1966
Don’t ask me if this is a good thing. I don’t feel that any person is able yet to make value judgments of that sort. Our job is diagnosis and observation prior to judgment.
“Communication Media: Makers of the Modern World” (1959), in The Medium and the Light (1997), p 37
Year: 1959
In terms of eye and ear, both are completely right, but when one begins making value judgments about the other – as Bergson did – the trouble begins. Bergson simply went over to the ear side of things and denounced the visual order as the enemy of all Being.
“Communication Media: Makers of the Modern World” (1959), in The Medium and the Light (1997), p 44
Year: 1959
Chapter:
Eye vs Ear
But the time for anger and protest is in the early stages of a new process. The present stage is extremely advanced. Moreover, it is full, not only of destructiveness but also of promises of rich new developments to which moral indignation is a very poor guide.
Preface, The Mechanical Bride, (1951), p v
Year: 1951
I take it that you understand that I have never expressed any preferences or values since The Mechanical Bride. Value judgments create smog in our culture and distract attention from processes. My personal bias is entirely pro-print and all of its effects.
Letter to Jonathan Miller (1970), in Letters of Marshall McLuhan (1987) p 405
Year: 1970
It is wise to withhold all value judgments when studying these media matters, since their effects are not capable of being isolated.
Understanding Media (1964), MIT/Routledge edition, p 315 [confirm]
Year: 1964
Chapters:
Advice | Media Study
My main theme is the extension of the nervous system in the electric age, and thus, the complete break with five thousand years of mechanical technology. This I state over and over again. I do not say whether it is a good or bad thing. To do so would be meaningless and arrogant.
Letter to Robert Fulford, June 1, 1964. in Letters of Marshall McLuhan (1987) p. 300
Year: 1964
Chapter:
Electric, Electronic
It is to make value judgments with fixed reference to the fragmentary perspective of literary culture.
Understanding Media (1964), MIT/Routledge edition, p 198
Year: 1964
“Whereas efficient causality encourages a private point of view and value judgments, formal causality by-passes value judgments and considers the audience, or reading public, as the major factor in the production of literature
Interpretation of Narrative (Book Review). Et Cetera; 1979, p 292
Year: 1979
Since advertising and entertainment are so very much bigger than education and politics in daily life, perhaps they may have taken on some of the functions of education and politics? An educator or a statesman who has not explored the world of advertising and entertainment today is simply out of touch with his materials.
Untitled manuscript, dated to summer, 1946
Year: 1946
Chapter:
Tools We Shape, Reshape Us
Anything you include in my hypothetical testimony before the committee should exclude all value judgements, all moral animus. My mode is probe only. My goal is discovery only. This is very upsetting to people who are attached to points of view. The hunter cannot afford a point of view. He must be mobile and multi-sensuous.
Letter to Professor J. Kennedy and group, August 15, 1968 (LAC)
Year: 1968
Chapter:
Perspective, Point of View
In terms of eye and ear, both are completely right, but when one begins making value judgments about the other — as Bergson did — the trouble begins. Bergson simply went over to the ear side of things and denounced the visual order as the enemy of all Being.
“Communication Media: Makers of the Modern World” (1959), in The Medium and the Light (1999), p 44
Year: 1959
Chapter:
Eye vs Ear
We are still enjoying the backlash of your charity! It was a grand visit and chat we had. Now and then I get comments from acquaintances who seem to be under the impression that you see me as an enthusiastic promoter and exponent of electric technology who is dissolving the values of Gutenberg culture. This is very far from being the case, and all of my life has been devoted to teaching and cultivating literary values. When I published Gutenberg Galaxy I was entirely mystified about the response which assumed it to be an attack on the printed word.
Letter to Malcolm Muggeridge, September 29, 1974, in Letters of Marshall McLuhan (1987) p 507
Year: 1974
“Value judgments of processes such as these create huge smoke screens. Even the most irrelevant and fatuous categories can muster the appearance of plausibility. Rigidity of stance or point-of-view creates a habit of moral valuation devoid of all the intellectual satisfactions of comprehension”.
Letter to the Editor, New Society, March 1970, in Letters (1987), p 403
Year: 1970
I take it that you understand that I have never expressed any preferences or values since
The Mechanical Bride. Value judgments create smog in our culture and distract attention from processes. My personal bias is entirely pro-print and all of its effects” Letter to Jonathan Miller, April, 1970 in Letters (1987), p 405
Year: 1970
My own studies of the effects of technology on human psyche and society have inclined people to regard me as the enemy of the things I describe. I feel a bit like the man who turns in a fire alarm only to be charged with arson. I have tried to avoid making personal value judgments about these processes since they seem far too important and too large in scope to deserve a merely private opinion.
Letter to Eric Havelock, May, 1970, in Letters (1987), p 406
Year: 1970
These approaches simply exclude the possibility of moralizing or value judgments except as something that might be added later as a personal confession.
Letter to James W. Carey, 1974, in Letters (1987), p 491
Year: 1974
Moralizing, on the other hand, is an attitude which is easily engendered by concern with material and efficient causes and once one asks. "Who owns this newspaper?” Or "Who runs this newspaper?”, most people are prepared to make value judgments. I hope you will have a look at my latest book Take Today: The Executive as Dropout (Harcourt. Brace, Jovanovich Inc. 1972) in which I study the structural effects of electric speed in decision-making and management.
Letter to James W. Carey, 1974, in Letters (1987), p 492
Year: 1974
Then I realized that the audience is, in all matters of art and expression, the formal cause, e.g., fallen man is the formal cause of the incarnation, and Plato's public is the formal cause of his philosophy. Formal cause is concerned with effects and with structural form, and not with value judgments.
Letter to John Culkin, 1975, in Letters (1987), p 510
Year: 1975
That is really doing something. Control and action in terms of values must follow understanding. Value judgments have long been allowed to create a moral fog around technological change such as renders understanding impossible.
The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man, (1962), p 213
Year: 1962
Don't ask me if this is a good thing. I don't feel that any person is able yet to make value judgments of that sort. Our job is diagnosis and observation prior to judgment.
“Communication Media: Makers of the Modern World,” 1959, in The Medium and the Light (1999), p 37
Year: 1959
As Burke said about the rebellious American colonies, “I do not know how to indict a whole people.” … In the same sway, no value judgments are possible when you’re dealing with a whole people. That is, no point of view is possible. Not unless you just wish to appear foolish.
The Museum as Large-Room Pinball Machine, Marshall McLuhan, Harley Parker, and Museum Professionals, 1967, full transcript of a seminar at the City Museum of New York, October 9-15, 1967, edited by William Buxton, published by U. of Alberta Press, 2026, p 80
Year: 1967
Chapter:
America, North America