Marshall McLuhan quotes

Born
July 21, 1911 Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

Died
December 31, 1980.

Occupation
Philosopher.

Marshall McLuhan was a Canadian professor, philosopher, and public intellectual. His work is one of the cornerstones of the study of media theory.

Good taste is the first refuge of the non-creative. It is the last-ditch stand of the artist.
– Marshall McLuhan

Ads are the cave art of the twentieth century.
– Marshall McLuhan

American youth attributes much more importance to arriving at driver’s license age than at voting age.
– Marshall McLuhan

All media exist to invest our lives with artificial perceptions and arbitrary values.
– Marshall McLuhan

The medium is the message.
– Marshall McLuhan

Schizophrenia may be a necessary consequence of literacy.
– Marshall McLuhan

I don’t necessarily agree with everything I say.
– Marshall McLuhan

We become what we behold. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us.
– Marshall McLuhan

Anyone who tries to make a distinction between education and entertainment doesn’t know the first thing about either.
– Marshall McLuhan

The more the data banks record about each one of us, the less we exist.
– Marshall McLuhan

The mark of our time is its revulsion against imposed patterns.
– Marshall McLuhan

Advertising is an environmental striptease for a world of abundance.
– Marshall McLuhan

Politics will eventually be replaced by imagery. The politician will be only too happy to abdicate in favor of his image, because the image will be much more powerful than he could ever be.
– Marshall McLuhan

The photograph reverses the purpose of travel, which until now had been to encounter the strange and unfamiliar.
– Marshall McLuhan

Advertising is the greatest art form of the 20th century.
– Marshall McLuhan

We shape our tools and afterwards our tools shape us.
– Marshall McLuhan

A typewriter is a means of transcribing thought, not expressing it.
– Marshall McLuhan

In this electronic age we see ourselves being translated more and more into the form of information, moving toward the technological extension of consciousness.
– Marshall McLuhan

Most of our assumptions have outlived their uselessness.
– Marshall McLuhan

Affluence creates poverty.
– Marshall McLuhan

A point of view can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight and understanding.
– Marshall McLuhan

It is the framework which changes with each new technology and not just the picture within the frame.
– Marshall McLuhan

Our Age of Anxiety is, in great part, the result of trying to do today’s job with yesterday’s tools and yesterday’s concepts.
– Marshall McLuhan

Canada is the only country in the world that knows how to live without an identity.
– Marshall McLuhan

Diaper backward spells repaid. Think about it.
– Marshall McLuhan

There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew.
– Marshall McLuhan

An administrator in a bureaucratic world is a man who can feel big by merging his non-entity in an abstraction. A real person in touch with real things inspires terror in him.
– Marshall McLuhan

Money is a poor man’s credit card.
– Marshall McLuhan

Money is just the poor man’s credit card.
– Marshall McLuhan

We drive into the future using only our rearview mirror.
– Marshall McLuhan

I wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t believed it.
– Marshall McLuhan

Jokes are grievances.
– Marshall McLuhan