A dictionary of Marshall McLuhan’s quotations

Depth awareness is created by parallel suggestion, not by connected statement. Yeats´s observation [regarding “emotion of multitude”] can also be found in Bacon, who writes on the modes of aphorism as contrasted with "writing in Method," in his Advancement of Learning: "Aphorisms, representing a knowledge broken, do invite men to inquire farther; whereas Methods, carrying the show of a total, do secure men, as if they were at farthest." Even the ad agencies know that to sell a car or a coat they must present the satisfactions in figure-ground relationship that will create the desired psychic effects.
“The Argument: Causality in the Electric World”, in Technology and Culture, Vol.14, No. 1, January (1973), p 15, reprinted in McLuhan Unbound # 3, (2005), p 26
Year: 1973
Chapter: Aphorism
Compiled by William Kuhns
© 2026, The Estate of Marshall McLuhan