A dictionary of Marshall McLuhan’s quotations

Compiled by William Kuhns
©2026 Marshall McLuhan Estate

Your search term is Xerography. Scroll down for the results!

🔍 Search Within Selection

Xerography is being viewed as a chapter. Search for all appearances

Viewing chapter Xerography (15 quotes)
Xerography tends to restore the custom-made book. Writing and publishing tend to become services of a corporate and inclusive kind. The printed word created the Public.

The Public consists of separate individuals each with his own point of view. Electric circuitry does not create a Public. It creates the Mass. The Mass does not consist of separate individuals, but of individuals profoundly involved in one another.
“The Relation of Environment to Anti-Environment” In The University of Windsor Review, Vol 11, No 1, Fall (1966) p 8-9, reprinted in Through the Vanishing Point with Harley Parker (1968), p 251 and McLuhan Unbound #4, (2017)
Quote #7480
Year: 1966
Xerography makes the reader both author and publisher in tendency. The highly centralized activity of publishing naturally breaks down into extreme decentralism when anybody can, by means of xerography, assemble printed, or written, or photographic materials which can e supplied with sound tracks.
“The Emperor’s Old Clothes” , (1966), reprinted in McLuhan Unbound #20 (2017), p 12
Quote #7481
Year: 1966
Never go after anything less than big game.
Reported by Eric McLuhan as an oft-repeated private maxim of his father
Quote #7482
Chapter: McLuhan on McLuhan
Xerox is behaving in the usual rear-view style, buying up old publishing companies....

They're trying to buy markets, not books. What a bunch!
“Like Yoga, Not Like the Movies,” Forbes, March 15, 1967, p 40
Quote #7483
Year: 1967
Chapter: Innovation
With Xerox the book becomes a service industry. It ceases to be a package or a product. The future of the book in school or outside of school is a service. You will go to the phone, or use some other means of announcing your interest, and say "The history of Egyptian arithmetic” and that you know a little Sanskrit and a lot of French and a lot of this and that and, “Please send me the latest.” You will receive in an hour or so a package with all the latest studies of Egyptian arithmetic from every journal in the world, and custom-made for your resources and means .
“Education in the Electronic Age”, Interchange Vol 1, No 4, 1970, p 2
Quote #7484
Year: 1970
The result [of accessible Xerox) is that confidential briefing is now beginning to take an oral rather than a written form.
“The Future of the Book” (1972), in Understanding Me (2003), p 180
Quote #7485
Year: 1972
Xerox extends the function of the typewriter almost to the point where the secret, personal memo is moved into the public domain, as with the Pentagon Papers. When notes for briefing individuals or groups are first typed and then Xeroxed, it is as if a private manuscript were put in the hands of the general reader. The typewriter plus photocopying thus, unexpectedly, restores many of the features of confidential handwritten records.
“Do Books Matter?” (1973), in On the Nature of Media (2016), p 214
Quote #7486
Year: 1973

Drawn to McLuhan #14

Illustration progressing from a bare-chested tribal man writing by hand on the left, through a red-threaded ghostly bearded figure overlapping a young man typing at a laptop, to streams of glowing green binary code flowing off to the right.
“Today we experience in reverse what preliterate man faced with writing.”
Surreal painterly illustration of anthropomorphic roses with human faces in a garden, expressing anger, grief, and sorrow, one holding a thorned whip, one weeping, one bleeding, and one reading a letter with a quill.
“The private psyche may be an artificial monster or the most precious discovery.”
Four-panel illustration in dark, moody tones showing people being watched through everyday technology: a woman checking a location app, a neighbor peering through blinds, a smart speaker listening in a kitchen, and teens on phones in a school hallway.
“The entire planet has become a whispering gallery, with a large portion of mankind engaged in making its living by keeping the rest of mankind under surveillance.”
Comic-style illustration of an older lecturer at a podium addressing a classroom, gesturing toward a student with a raised hand, with a speech bubble of bold text above him and equations on the blackboard behind.
“That question is so stupid that it deserves an answer.”
Split image contrasting ancient petroglyph carvings of a bird, a hand, and a wolf on a stone surface with a glowing circular digital portal containing the same bird, hand, and wolf as emoji, set against a futuristic city skyline at dusk.
“Primitive man always thought that they made the world, that they wound it up and renewed its energies by their rituals. Are we not moving very much back into that state?”
Cartoon of a distraught teenage boy hurling his phone across a living room while shouting about being unfriended, as his startled parents watch from the couch
“Perhaps the terrifying thing about the new media for most of us is the inevitable evocation of irrational response.”
Illustrated scene of an older man and a young man facing each other in a diner booth over coffee, while outside the window a uniform crowd of people in pointed dunce caps files past.
“It has taken me a long time to take stupidity and indifference for granted as a universal and irremediable human condition.”
Cartoon illustration of a giant robot in a city street gathering white eggs into a basket, gathered from a dense crowd of people below, each topped with an empty speech bubble.
“Information is the distillate of human chatter.”
Sepia-toned illustration of a man in a leather jacket standing with a raised fist and hand on hip between two towering columns of stacked books lining a cobblestone street.
“I am an intellectual thug who has been slowly accumulating a private arsenal with every intention of using it.” (in a 1950 letter to Ezra Pound)
Photograph of a young woman in a coffee shop holding up her smartphone, which displays a glowing image of a human brain on its screen, as she studies it intently.
“We have become an organism that now wears its brain outside its skull and its nerves outside its hide.”
Current methods of type reproduction are themselves not far from the TV process. Xerox has paradoxically revived a great popular interest in all printed books and manuscripts. Ian Willison of the Rare Book Department of the British Museum has noted how the reproduction of rare books has become a considerable commercial business since xerox.
“The Changing Structure of Printing in the Electronic Age” (1974)
Quote #7487
Year: 1974
Chapter: LOM 3 – Retrieve
When notes for briefing individuals or groups are first typed and then Xeroxed, it is as if a private manuscript were put in the hands of the general reader. The typewriter plus photocopying thus, unexpectedly, restores many of the features of confidential hand-written records.
“Do Books Matter?” Proceedings of a seminar promoted by the Working Party on Library and Book Trade Relations and the National Book League; reprinted in Understanding Me (2003), pages179-180 and Essential McLuhan (1997, UK) p 279.
Quote #7488
Year: 2003
Xerography—every man’s brain-picker—heralds the times of instant publishing. Anybody can now become both author and publisher. Take any books on any subject and custom-make your own book by simply xeroxing a chapter from this one, a chapter from that one—instant steal!”
Address at Vision 65, (1965), p. 9
Quote #7489
Year: 1965
Chapter: Next Medium [The]
The Pentagon papers were position papers that probably were never read by anyone. Xerox is responsible for the proliferation of large committees and their position papers.
“Watergate – Participatory Torture” (1973), p 3
Quote #7490
Year: 1973
Xerox has also created a new form of reading material called the “position paper These are the briefing materials set before members of committees, of which the Pentagon Papers are a notorious instance.
“The Changing Structure of Printing in the Electric Age” (1974)
Quote #7491
Year: 1974
But xerography is electricity invading the world of typography, and it means a total revolution in this old sphere, or this old technology, a revolution that is being felt in the classroom itself.
“Our Dawning Electric Age” (1965), p 16
Quote #7492
Year: 1965
Position papers are secret or confidential documents for the attention of committees, and any office boy can publish these, no matter how top secret they may be.
“At the Moment of Sputnik” (1974), reprinted in MM: the Man and His Message (1989), p 70
Quote #7493
Year: 1974
…xerography is the antithesis of letters and typography. It deals with the page and the book as a single gestalt. With xerography the reader can become once more like the ancient scribe, both author and publisher of anything that intrests him. Xerography ends the central position of the publisher and ends the role of the author as one seeking a vehicle of self-expression, and is about to become a corporate probe of society.
“The Crack in the Rear-View Mirror” (1966), p 32
Quote #7494
Year: 1966
© The Estate of Marshall McLuhan