Quotessence
Home / Authors / Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan

Marshall McLuhan Quotes

Philosopher

Filter quotes by topic

AllMediaMenTechnologyWorldArtEnvironmentFormPeopleInformationHumansSpaceElectricMediumsWayPatternsSocialAgeIfsTodayArtist

Famous Marshall McLuhan Quotes

“The tribalizing power of the new electronic media, the way in which they return to us to the unified fields of the old oral cultures, to tribal cohesion and pre-individualist patterns of thought, is little understood. Tribalism is the sense of the deep bond of family, the closed society as the norm of community.”

WayLittlesCultureCommunityMediaFieldsReturnUnderstoodPatternsNormUnifiedTribalismCohesionElectronic Media
Book:Media Research: Technology, Art and Communication
Create image

“Our electrically-configured world has forced us to move from the habit of data classification to the mode of pattern recognition. We can no longer build serially, block-by-block, step-by-step, because instant communication insures that all factors of the environment and of experience co-exist in a state of active interplay.”

WorldStatesMovingStepsEnvironmentCommunicationHabitPatternsActiveBlockFactorsRecognitionDataInstantClassificationInstant Communication
Book:The medium is the massage: an inventory of effects
Create image

“Persons grouped around a fire or candle for warmth or light are less able to pursue independent thoughts, or even tasks, than people supplied with electric light. In the same way, the social and educational patterns latent in automation are those of self-employment and artistic autonomy.”

PeopleWayPersonsWarSelfLightAbleSocialTechnologyFireTasksIndependentPatternsEducationalPursueEmploymentArtisticWarmthCandleElectricAutonomyLatentIndependent ThoughtAutomationElectric Light
Author:Marshall McLuhan
Create image

“The medium, or process, of our time - electric technology is reshaping and restructuring patterns of social interdependence and every aspect of our personal life. It is forcing us to reconsider and re-evaluate practically every thought, every action.”

ActionSocialProcessTechnologyAspectPatternsMediumsOur TimeElectricPersonal LifeEvaluateInterdependenceRestructuring
Book:The medium is the massage: an inventory of effects
Create image

“Professionalism is environmental. Amateurism is anti environmental. Professionalism merges the individual into patterns of total environment. Amateurism seeks the development of the total awareness of the individual and the critical awareness of the ground rules of society. The amateur can afford to loose.”

IndividualEnvironmentAwarenessMediaDevelopmentEnvironmentalPatternsCriticalProfessionalismGround Rules
Book:The medium is the massage: an inventory of effects
Create image

“Professionalism merges the individual into patterns of total environment. Amateurism seeks the development of the total awareness of the individual and the critical awareness of the groundrules of society. The amateur can afford to lose. The professional tends to classify and specialise, to accept uncritically the groundrules of the environment. The groundrules provided by the mass response of his colleagues serve as a pervasive environment of which he is contentedly unaware. The 'expert' is the man who stays put.”

MenIndividualLosesAcceptingEnvironmentAwarenessHe ManDevelopmentMassResponsePatternsCriticalExpertsColleaguesProfessionalism
Book:The medium is the massage: an inventory of effects
Create image

“Today's child is bewildered when he enters the 19th century environment that still characterizes the educational establishment where information is scarce but ordered and structured by fragmented, classified patterns subjects, and schedules.”

ChildrenStillsTodayEnvironmentSubjectsCenturyInformationPatternsEducationalEstablishmentSchedulesScarce19th CenturyBewilderedFragmented
Book:The medium is the massage: an inventory of effects
Create image

“New media may at first appear as mere codes of transmission for older achievement and established patterns of thought. But nobody could make the mistake of supposing that phonetic writing merely made it possible for the Greeks to set down in visual order what they had though and known before writing. In the same way printing made literature possible. It did not merely encode literature.”

WayWritingFirstsMayMadeOrderLiteratureMistakeKnownMediaAchievementMerePatternsMade ItCodeGreekVisualsPrintingTransmissionSupposingNew MediaSupposing That
Author:Marshall McLuhan
Create image