A dictionary of Marshall McLuhan’s quotations

Compiled by William Kuhns
©2026 Marshall McLuhan Estate

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Found 12 quotes (4 duplicates hidden).
It will do no harm to modern literary and editorial practitioners to confront the fact that the ads have long surpassed them in respect to providing pleasure, amusement and distraction.
“Advertising as a Magical Institution” from The Commerce Journal, Toronto, (1952), reprinted in On the Nature of Media (2016), p 19
Quote #109
Year: 1952
Chapter: Advertising
In fact, it is only by careful study of the history of changing techniques of representation in the arts that it is possible to grasp the inner dynamics of social change. The mind of the artist is always the point of maximal sensitivity and resourcefulness in expressing altered realities in the common culture.
“A Historical Approach to the Media” , in Teachers College Record, Vol 57, No. 2 , November (1955), p 109
Quote #289
Year: 1955
Chapter: Anticipating Change
Today's executive is called upon not only to cope with standard accounting procedures but also to know when to use statistical methods, operations research, cost-benefits analysis, budget plans, computer programs, and general systems science. System designers are constantly developing new techniques for reducing more and more industrial production and human organization processes to bits, the ultimate yes or not-yes choices of Computers. Computers can do better than ever what needn't be done at all. Making sense is still a human monopoly. Computers need only programmed instructions and codified inputs to handle sequential data and analysis to yield information more rapidly than people. But no computer "know-how" can transform breakdowns into breakthroughs without human insight. Knowing what to do is still a human monopoly. Only people can make sense by dislocating unfamiliar situations
into meaning.
Take Today with Barrington Nevitt, 1972, p 109
Quote #1257
Year: 1972
Chapter: Computer
But the radio and TV were not just the electrification of speech and gesture but the electronification of the entire range of human personal expressiveness. With electronification the flow is taken out of the wire and into the vacuum tube circuit, which confers freedom and flexibility such as are in metaphor and in words themselves.
“A Historical Approach to the Media”, In Teachers College Record, Vol. 57, Issue 2, November (1955), p 109
Quote #1902
Year: 1955
Chapters: Electric, Electronic | Media Reprocess Media
↪ Also at #1932, #4603
At electric speed, all forms are pushed to the limits of their potential.

Laws of Media: The New Science with Eric McLuhan, (1988), p 109
Quote #1939
Year: 1988
Chapter: Electric, Electronic
We can no longer accept nor expect others to accept a dominant musical style, fashion, convention. Our music now includes the music of many periods and cultures in a vital and living relationship.
Counterblast (1969), p 109
Quote #2472
Year: 1969
Chapter: Global Village
Things reverse form when pushed to the limit of their potential. The flip from visual to acoustic order, from rational connectedness to intuitive insight, came on the heels of the Gothic revival and seemed to prelude the advent of the electronic age of quantum mechanics and discontinuous matter and space.
Laws of Media: The New Science with Eric McLuhan, (1988), p 109
Quote #3446
Year: 1988
Chapter: LOM 4 - Flip, or Reverse into the Opposite

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.”
Why did the telegraph, the telephone and the phonograph become so tightly intertwined in their origin and development?
Projects and Questions- Phonograph, in NAEB Report on Understanding New Media, June (1960), p 109
Quote #5898
Year: 1960
Chapter: Questions He Asks
What has been the effect of the phonograph on the development of the orchestra?
Projects and Questions- Phonograph, in NAEB Report on Understanding New Media, June (1960), p 109
Quote #5899
Year: 1960
Chapter: Questions He Asks
Why should the early phase of the phonograph have created a hardening of the musical categories?
Projects and Questions- Phonograph, in NAEB Report on Understanding New Media, June (1960), p 109
Quote #5900
Year: 1960
Chapter: Questions He Asks
How does the LP [the long-playing record] alter the roles of the phonograph?
Projects and Questions- Phonograph, in NAEB Report on Understanding New Media, June (1960), p 109
Quote #5901
Year: 1960
Chapter: Questions He Asks
The organization chart is not very necessary anymore. It’s no longer of use. That little series of classified levels and categories, and initiatives, doesn’t obtain in business anymore. The dialogue and interplay between these levels are so considerable that they have had to cross out the organization chart these last twenty years. … The business community is not motivated by disinterested passion for knowledge, but it is desperately eager to survive, and therefore its motivation in learning is considerable. I have spoken a great deal to management groups over the past twenty years, and I have always found them very flexible, very eager to learn, and they have a lot to learn in our time. They’re just as desperately hard-pressed by innovation in new technology as any part of the community.
The Museum as Large-Room Pinball Machine, Marshall McLuhan, Harley Parker, and Museum Professionals, 1967, full transcript of a seminar at the City Museum of New York, October, 1967, edited by William Buxton, published by U. of Alberta Press, 2026, p 109
Quote #1491
Year: 1967
Chapters: Dialogue | Linear and Nonlinear | Management
↪ Also at #3512, #3660
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