A dictionary of Marshall McLuhan’s quotations

Blake makes quite explicit that when sense ratios change, men change. Sense ratios change when any one sense of bodily or mental function is externalized in technological form:

The Spectre is the Reasoning Power in Man, & when separated From Imagination and losing itself as in steel in a Ratio
Of the Things of Memory, It thence frames Laws & Moralities
To destroy Imagination, the Divine Body, by Martyrdoms & Wars.
“We Need a New Picture of Knowledge,” New Insights and the Curriculum Yearbook (NAEB), 1963, p 8
Year: 1963
Chapters: Imagination | Memory | Senses
↪ Also at #4743, #6314
Compiled by William Kuhns
© 2026, The Estate of Marshall McLuhan