Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Marshall Mcluhan (Canadian Thinker)

Marshall Mcluhan (1911–80,) fully Herbert Marshall McLuhan, was a Canadian writer and thinker. He became well known in the 1960s for his maxim ‘the medium is the message’ and his contention that it is the characteristics of a particular medium rather than the information it disseminates influences and controls communities.

Born in Edmonton, Mcluhan studied English literature at the universities of Manitoba and Cambridge, and in 1946 became a professor at St Michael’s College, Toronto. In 1963, having led two examinations into culture and communication media, he was appointed director of the University of Toronto’s Centre for Culture and Technology.

Mcluhan held the controversial view that the invention of printing, with its emphasis on the eye rather than the ear, led to the destruction of a cohesive, interdependent society. He contended that it prompts humans to be more introspective, individualistic, and self-centered.

Mcluhan’s publications include The Mechanical Bride (1951,) The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962,) Understanding Media (1964,) The Medium is the Message (1967; with Q Fiore,) and Counter-Blast (1970.)

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Marshall Mcluhan

It is the weak and confused who worship the pseudo-simplicities of brutal directness.
—Marshall Mcluhan
Topics: Sincerity, Candor

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
Topics: Conscience

The medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium—that is, of any extension of ourselves—result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology.
—Marshall Mcluhan
Topics: Media

The machine called Nature into an art form. For the first time at men began to regard Nature as a source of aesthetic and spiritual values.
—Marshall Mcluhan
Topics: Wilderness

The name of a man is a numbing blow from which he never recovers.
—Marshall Mcluhan
Topics: Identity, Names

Where the whole man is involved there is no work. Work begins with the division of labor.
—Marshall Mcluhan
Topics: Work

Advertising is the greatest art form of the twentieth century.
—Marshall Mcluhan
Topics: Media, Advertising

The school system, custodian of print culture, has no place for the rugged individual. It is, indeed, the homogenizing hopper into which we toss our integral tots for processing.
—Marshall Mcluhan
Topics: Education

One of the effects of living with electric information is that we live habitually in a state of information overload. There’s always more than you can cope with.
—Marshall Mcluhan
Topics: Information

A commercial society whose members are essentially ascetic and indifferent in social ritual has to be provided with blueprints and specifications for evoking the right tone for every occasion.
—Marshall Mcluhan
Topics: Manners

Most clear writing is a sign that there is no exploration going on. Clear prose indicates the absence of thought.
—Marshall Mcluhan
Topics: Writing

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

There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew.
—Marshall Mcluhan
Topics: Earth

Television brought the brutality of war into the comfort of the living room. Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America—not on the battlefields of Vietnam.
—Marshall Mcluhan
Topics: Television

Good taste is the first refuge of the non creative. It is the last ditch stand of the artist.
—Marshall Mcluhan
Topics: Taste, Style

Ads are the cave art of the twentieth century.
—Marshall Mcluhan
Topics: Art, Arts, Artists

Jokes are grievances.
—Marshall Mcluhan
Topics: Jokes, Humor

Schizophrenia may be a necessary consequence of literacy.
—Marshall Mcluhan
Topics: One liners, Mental Illness

The business of the advertiser is to see that we go about our business with some magic spell or tune or slogan throbbing quietly in the background of our minds.
—Marshall Mcluhan
Topics: Business

The car has become an article of dress without which we feel uncertain, unclad, and incomplete.
—Marshall Mcluhan
Topics: Driving

When producers want to know what the public wants, they graph it as curves. When they want to tell the public what to get, they say it in curves.
—Marshall Mcluhan
Topics: Shopping

The new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a global village.
—Marshall Mcluhan
Topics: Media, Independence

The car has become the carapace, the protective and aggressive shell, of urban and suburban man.
—Marshall Mcluhan
Topics: Driving

Today it is not the classroom nor the classics which are the repositories of models of eloquence, but the ad agencies.
—Marshall Mcluhan
Topics: Conversation, Eloquence

Most of our assumptions have outlived their uselessness.
—Marshall Mcluhan
Topics: Assumptions

If the nineteenth century was the age of the editorial chair, ours is the century of the psychiatrist’s couch.
—Marshall Mcluhan
Topics: Psychiatry

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
Topics: Politics, Politicians

The modern little red riding hood, reared on singing commercials, has no objections to being eaten by the wolf.
—Marshall Mcluhan
Topics: Advertising

All media exist to invest our lives with artificial perceptions and arbitrary values.
—Marshall Mcluhan
Topics: Media

‘Money talks’ because money is a metaphor, a transfer, and a bridge.
—Marshall Mcluhan
Topics: One liners

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