A dictionary of Marshall McLuhan’s quotations

Nobody can see how new technologies metamorphose earlier ones into art forms. There is certainly no connection between these events. If there were any connection there could be no change. The action is where the gap is. It has always been thus. Change requires the resonant and abrasive interval, whether in the tragic flaw of character in the tragic hero of Aristotle, or in the chemical bond of Linus Pauling. The gap created by the complementary forms of white and colored, of affluence and poverty, of war and peace, of ignorance and knowledge, all engender the processes of change.
Letter to Editor of New Society, March 10, 1970
Year: 1970
Chapters: Change | Interval | Media Study
↪ Also at #992, #3086
Compiled by William Kuhns
© 2026, The Estate of Marshall McLuhan