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Marshall McLuhan
394 quotes
“America is 100% 18th Century. The 18th century had chucked out the principle of metaphor and analogy — the basic fact that as A is to B so is C to D. AB:CD. It can see AB relations. But relations in four terms are still verboten. This amounts to deep occultation of nearly all human thought for the USA.”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) first seen 1948 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Ezra Pound (21 December 1948)
“Poetry and the arts can’t exist in America. Mere exposure to the arts does nothing for a mentality which is incorrigibly dialectical. The vital tensions and nutritive action of ideogram remain inaccessible to this state of mind.”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) first seen 1948 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Ezra Pound (21 December 1948)
“There is a real, living unity in our time, as in any other, but it lies submerged under a superficial hubbub of sensation.”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) first seen 1951 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Harold Adam Innis (14 March 1951), published in Letters of Marshall McLuhan (1987), p. 223
“The young today cannot follow narrative but they are alert to drama. They cannot bear description but they love landscape and action.”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) first seen 1951 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Harold Adam Innis (14 March 1951), published in Essential McLuhan (1995), edited by Eric McLuhan and Frank Zingrone, p. 74
“The business of art is no longer the communication of thoughts or feelings which are to be conceptually ordered, but a direct participation in an experience. The whole tendency of modern communication...is towards participation in a process, rather than apprehension of concepts.”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) first seen 1951 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Harold Adam Innis (14 March 1951), published in Essential McLuhan (1995), edited by Eric McLuhan and Frank Zingrone, p. 73
“Ads represent the main channel of intellectual and artistic effort in the modern world.”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) first seen 1953 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Commonweal, Vol. 58 (1953), p. 557
“Human perception is literally incarnation.”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) first seen 1954 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Catholic Humanism and Modern Letters", in Christian Humanism in Letters, The McAuley Lectures (1954), p. 49-67
“Nobody can doubt that the entire range of applied science contributes to the very format of a newspaper. But the headline is a feature which began with the Napoleonic Wars. The headline is a primitive shout of rage, triumph, fear, or warning, and newspapers have thrived on wars ever since.”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Even pacifist agitation or the nation-wide fever of big sports competitions acts as a spur to war fever in circumstances like ours. Any kind of excitement or emotion contributes to the possibility of dangerous explosions when the feelings of huge populations are kept inflamed even in peacetime for the sake of the advancement of commerce. Headlines mean street sales. It takes emotion to move merchandise. And wars and rumors of wars are the merchandise and also the emotion of the popular press.”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The ordinary person senses the greatness of the odds against him even without thought or analysis, and he adapts his attitudes unconsciously. A huge passivity has settled on industrial society. For people carried about in mechanical vehicles, earning their living by waiting on machines, listening much of the waking day to canned music, watching packaged movie entertainment and capsulated news, for such people it would require an exceptional degree of awareness and an especial heroism of effort to be anything but supine consumers of processed goods.”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Such is the content of the mental life of the Hemingway hero and the good guy in general. Every day he gets beaten into a servile pulp by his own mechanical reflexes, which are constantly busy registering and reacting to the violent stimuli which his big, noisy, kinesthetic environment has provided for his unreflective reception.”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For tribal man, space was the uncontrollable mystery. For technological man it is time that occupies the same role.”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Instead of scurrying into a corner and wailing about what media are doing to us, one should charge straight ahead and kick them in the electrodes.”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) first seen 1960 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: from a 1960 report to the National Educational Broadcasters Association, quoted in Marshall McLuhan: The Medium and the Messenger by Philip Marchand, p. 148
“Media are means of extending and enlarging our organic sense lives into our environment.”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) first seen 1961 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Care and Feeding of Communication Innovation", Dinner Address to Conference on 8 mm Sound Film and Education, Teachers College, Columbia University, 8 November 1961
“When new technologies impose themselves on societies long habituated to older technologies, anxieties of all kinds result.”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) first seen 1963 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Location, Volume 1 Issues 1-2, 1963, p. 44
“New media are new archetypes, at first disguised as degradations of older media.”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) first seen 1964 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Arts in society, Volume 3, 1964, p. 240
“The TV camera has no shutter. It does not deal with aspects or facets of objects in high resolution. It is a means of direct pick-up by the electrical groping over surfaces.”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) first seen 1964 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Arts in society, Volume 3, 1964, p. 242
“My main theme is the extension of the nervous system in the electric age, and thus, the complete break with five thousand years of mechanical technology. This I state over and over again. I do not say whether it is a good or bad thing. To do so would be meaningless and arrogant.”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) first seen 1964 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Robert Fulford, 1964. Letters of Marshall McLuhan (1987), p. 300
“If a work of art is to explore new environments, it is not to be regarded as a blueprint but rather as a form of action-painting.”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) first seen 1965 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: To Wilfred Watson, October 6 1965. Letters of Marshall McLuhan (1987), p. 325
“There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all crew.”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) first seen 1963 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Statement in 1965, in reference to Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1963) by Buckminster Fuller, as quoted Paradigms Lost: Learning from Environmental Mistakes, Mishaps and Misdeeds (2005) by Daniel A. Vallero, p. …
“The mother tongue is propaganda.”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) first seen 1965 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The University of Windsor review, Volumes 1-2, 1965, p. 10
“Environments are not just containers, but are processes that change the content totally.”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) first seen 1965 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: American scholar, Volume 35, 1965, p. 200
“In television, images are projected at you. You are the screen. The images wrap around you. You are the vanishing point.”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) first seen 1966 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The diplomat, Issues 197-208, 1966, p. 20
“The present is always invisible because it's environmental. No environment is perceptible, simply because it saturates the whole field of attention.”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) first seen 1966 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Mademoiselle: the magazine for the smart young woman, Volume 64, 1966, p. 114
“People in new environments always produce the new preceptual modality without any difficulty or awareness of change. It is later that the psychic and social realignments baffle societies.”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) first seen 1966 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: ARTnews annual, Volume 31, Art Foundation, 1966, p. 56
“Native societies did not think of themselves as being in the world as occupants but considered that their rituals created the world and keep it operational.”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) first seen 1967 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: College and University Journal, Volumes 6-7, American College Public Relations Association, 1967, p. 3
“The new media are not bridges between man and nature - they are nature...The new media are not ways of relating us to the old world; they are the real world and they reshape what remains of the old world at will.”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) first seen 1969 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Media as the New Nature, 1969, p. 14
“Language is a form of organized stutter.”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) first seen 1969 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview with John Lennon, December 1969, CBS Television
“Literacy, in translating man out of the closed world of tribal depth and resonance, gave man an eye for an ear and ushered him into a visual open world of specialized and divided consciousness.”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“King Lear is a working model of the process of denudation by which men translate themselves from a world of roles to a world of jobs. (p. 16)”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The anguish of the third dimension is given its first verbal manifestation in poetic history in King Lear. (p. 18)”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The interiorization of the technology of the phonetic alphabet translates man from the magical world of the ear to the neutral visual world. (p. 21)”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Schizophrenia may be a necessary consequence of literacy. (p. 26)”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Does the interiorization of media such as letters alter the ratio among our senses and change mental processes? (p. 28)”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Civilization gives the barbarian or tribal man an eye for an ear and is now at odds with the electronic world. (p. 30)”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Literacy affects the physiology as well as the psychic life of the African. (p. 38)”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Non-literate societies cannot see films or photos without much training. (p. 41)”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“African audiences cannot accept our passive consumer role in the presence of film. (p. 44)”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When technology extends one of our senses, a new translation of culture occurs as swiftly as the new technology is interiorized. (p. 47)”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A theory of cultural change is impossible without knowledge of the changing sense ratios effected by various externalizations of our senses. (p. 49)”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The twentieth century encounter between alphabetic and electronic forces of culture confers on the printed word a crucial role in staying the return to “the Africa within.” (p. 51)”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Current concern with reading and spelling reform steers away from visual to auditory stress. (p. 54)”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The alphabet is an aggressive and militant absorber and transformer of culture, as Harold Innis was the first to show. (p. 56)”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Homeric hero becomes a split-man as he assumes an individual ego. (p. 58)”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The world of the Greeks illustrates why visual appearances cannot interest people before the interiorization of alphabetic technology. (p. 61)”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Greek “point of view” in both art and chronology has little in common with ours but was much like that of the Middle Ages. (p. 64)”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Greeks invented both their artistic and scientific novelties after the interiorization of the alphabet. (p. 66)”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The increase of visual stress among the Greeks alienated them from the primitive art that the electronic age now reinvents after interiorizing the “unified field” of electric all-at-onceness. (p. 72)”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A nomadic society cannot experience enclosed space. (p. 73)”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Primitivism has become the vulgar cliche of much modern art and speculation. (p. 77)”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source