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Portrait of Marshall McLuhan

Marshall McLuhan

(1911–1980) Opinion Journalist Canada

433 quotes in 1404 categories

Marshall McLuhan’s 433 statements distill his groundbreaking ideas about media, technology, and society. His aphoristic style packs dense insight into brief lines, making complex theory approachable. This selection offers a quick yet thorough look at the concepts that reshaped cultural criticism.

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Marshall McLuhan was an opinion journalist from Canada, best known for Understanding Media.

Quick Facts About Marshall McLuhan

Born: July 21, 1911
Died: December 31, 1980
Nationality: Canada
Profession: Opinion Journalist
Notable works: Understanding Media
Spouse: Corinne Lewis

About Marshall McLuhan

Herbert Marshall McLuhan was a Canadian philosopher whose work is among the cornerstones of the study of media theory. Raised in Winnipeg, McLuhan studied at the University of Manitoba and the University of Cambridge. He began his teaching career as a professor of English at several universities in the United States and Canada before moving to the University of Toronto in 1946, where he remained for the rest of his life. He is known as "the father of media studies".

Biography source: Wikipedia

Awards & Honors

Molson Prize Person of National Historic Significance Governor General's Award for English-language non-fiction Companion of the Order of Canada

Quotes by Marshall McLuhan

Affluence creates poverty.

Marshall McLuhan

Affluence

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Our permanent address is tommorrow.

Marshall McLuhan

Address

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I do not explain, I explore.

Marshall McLuhan

Explain

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Even mud gives the illusion of depth.

Marshall McLuhan

Depth

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Class in society is determined by voice

Marshall McLuhan

Class

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Jokes are grievances.

Marshall McLuhan

Comedy

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All media work us over completely.

Marshall McLuhan

Completely

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Invention is the mother of necessities.

Marshall McLuhan

Business

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Schizophrenia may be a necessary consequence of literacy.

Marshall McLuhan

Consequence

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... Their power to see environments as they really are.

Marshall McLuhan

Environment

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

Marshall McLuhan

Typewriter

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Primitivism has become the vulgar cliché of much modern art and speculation.

Marshall McLuhan

Art

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We don't know who discovered water, but we know it wasn't the fish.

Marshall McLuhan

Discovered

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“Many a good argument is ruined by some fool who knows what he is talking about.”

Marshall McLuhan

Argument

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We go forward looking in the rearview mirror.

Marshall McLuhan

Forward

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Education is civil defence against media fallout.

Marshall McLuhan

Defence

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The victory over Euclidean space was not achieved by isolated individuals, but by a field of young rebels opposed to all absolutes.

Marshall McLuhan

Absolutes

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Today the tyrant rules not by club or fist, but disguised as a market researcher, he shepherds his flocks in the ways…

Marshall McLuhan

Comfort

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To say that "the camera cannot lie" is merely to underline the multiple deceits that are now practised in its name.

Marshall McLuhan

Cameras

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Ads represent the main channel of intellectual and artistic effort in the modern world.

Marshall McLuhan

Ads

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Why is it so easy to acquire the solutions of past problems and so difficult to solve current ones

Marshall McLuhan

Acquire

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Relativity theory forced the abandonment, in principle, of absolute space and absolute time.

Marshall McLuhan

Abandonment

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“Ours is the first age in which many thousands of the best-trained individual minds have made it a full-time business to get…

Marshall McLuhan

Psychology

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When new technologies impose themselves on societies long habituated to older technologies, anxieties of all kinds result.

Marshall McLuhan

All kinds

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Historians and archaeologists will one day discover that the ads of our time are the richest and most faithful reflections that any…

Marshall McLuhan

Ads

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Jobs represent a relatively recent pattern of work. From the fifteenth century to the twentieth century, there is a steady progress of…

Marshall McLuhan

Jobs

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Art as radar acts as an early alarm system, as it were, enabling us to discover social and psychic targets in lots…

Marshall McLuhan

Art

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The media have substituted themselves for the older world. Even if we should wish to recover that older world we can do…

Marshall McLuhan

Education

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Such is the content of the mental life of the Hemingway hero and the good guy in general. Every day he gets…

Marshall McLuhan

Beaten

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I expect to see the coming decades transform the planet into an art form; the new man, linked in a cosmic harmony…

Marshall McLuhan

Art

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The user of the electric light - or a hammer, or a language, or a book - is the content. As such,…

Marshall McLuhan

Book

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In big industry new ideas are invited to rear their heads so they can be clobbered at once. The idea department of…

Marshall McLuhan

Bigs

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Gramophone and movies were merely the mechanization of speech and gesture. But the radio and TV were not just the electronification of…

Marshall McLuhan

Circuits

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“By the way, goals and objectives are meaningless at the speed of light. At the speed of light, you aren’t going somewhere,…

Marshall McLuhan

Goals

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I am resolutely opposed to all innovation, all change, but I am determined to understand what’s happening. Because I don’t choose just…

Marshall McLuhan

Buttons

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The artist is engaged constantly in building anti-environments. (And, by the way, the Courtly Love people were engaged in making love itself…

Marshall McLuhan

Art

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I am a Christian according to my conscience in belief,in purpose and wish;Mnot of course by the orthodox standard. But I am…

Marshall McLuhan

Belief

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The ordinary person senses the greatness of the odds against him even without thought or analysis, and he adapts his attitudes unconsciously.…

Marshall McLuhan

Analysis

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“At every turn, while he was investigating the background for his study of Thomas Nashe, he would encounter the Church — what…

Marshall McLuhan

Books

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During the Second War, the U.S.O. sent special issues of the principal American magazines to the Armed Forces, with the ads omitted.…

Marshall McLuhan

Ads

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Marshall McLuhan by topic

Technology (45) Media (45) Art (44) Inspirational (35) Men (32) World (31) Time (29) Artist (29) Environment (28) People (23) Form (22) Nature (21) Language (19) Information (19) Humans (19) Space (18) Love (18) Electric (17) Way (16) Patterns (16) Social (15) Mediums (15) Education (15) Age (15) Advertising (15)