A dictionary of Marshall McLuhan’s quotations

“The meaning of a work of art, as the artists of past centuries can tell us, has nothing to do with what you think about it. It has to do with its actions upon you. It is a form: it acts upon you. It invades your senses. It restructures your outlook. It completely changes your attitudes, your wavelengths. So our attitudes, our sensibilities are completely altered by new forms, regardless of what we think about them.
“Communication Media: Makers of the Modern World” (1959), reprinted in The Medium and the Light (1999), p 38
Year: 1959
Chapter: Media as Form
Compiled by William Kuhns
© 2026, The Estate of Marshall McLuhan