Quotessence
Home / Authors / Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan

Marshall McLuhan Quotes

Philosopher

Filter quotes by topic

AllMediaMenTechnologyWorldArtEnvironmentFormPeopleInformationHumansSpaceElectricMediumsWayPatternsSocialAgeIfsTodayArtist

Famous Marshall McLuhan Quotes

“The world of visual perspective is one of unified and homogeneous space. Such a world is alien to the resonating diversity of spoken words. So language was the last art to accept the visual logic of Gutenberg technology, and the first to rebound in the electric age.”

WorldFirstsArtAgeLastsLanguageSpaceAcceptingTechnologyPerspectiveDiversityLogicAliensVisualsElectricUnifiedSpoken WordReboundHomogeneousResonatingGutenberg
Book:The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man
Create image

“The family circle has widened. The worldpool of information fathered by the electric media--movies, Telstar, flight--far surpassesany possible influence mom and dad can now bring to bear. Character no longer is shaped by only two earnest, fumbling experts. Now all the world's a sage.”

WorldTwoCharacterInfluenceMediaInformationMomBearsDadCirclesFlightExpertsElectricSageEarnestMom And Dad
Book:The medium is the massage: an inventory of effects
Create image

“The hallucinogenic world, in environmental terms, can be considered as a forlorn effort of man to match the speed of power of hisextended nervous system (which we call the "electronic world") by intensifying the activity of his inner nervous system.”

MenWorldTermEffortActivityEnvironmentalSpeedNervousNervous SystemElectronicsForlorn
Book:The Medium and the Light: Reflections on Religion and Media
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

“[Cameras] tend to turn people into things and the photograph extends and multiplies the human image to the proportions of mass-produced merchandise and, [in the age of photography] the world itself becomes a sort of museum of objects that have been encountered before in some other museum and to say that the camera cannot lie is merely to underline the multiple deceits that are now practiced in its name.”

PeopleWorldHumansHas BeensAgeLyingTurnsNamesObjectsPhotographyMassCamerasPhotographProportionDeceitMuseumsMultipleMerchandise
Author:Marshall McLuhan
Create image

“Physiologically, man in the normal use of technology (or his variously extended body) is perpetually modified by it and in turn finds ever new ways of modifying his technology. Man becomes, as it were, the sex organs of the machine world, as the bee of the plant world, enabling it to fecundate and to evolve ever new forms. The machine world reciprocates man's love by expediting his wishes and desires, namely, in providing him with wealth.”

MenWorldWayUseBodyFormDesireTurnsWishSexWealthTechnologyNormalMachinesPlantEvolveOrgansBeesProvidingNew WaysEnablingReciprocateModifyingUse Of Technology
Author:Marshall McLuhan
Create image

“Erwin Schrodinger has explained how he and his fellow physicists had agreed that they would report their new discoveries and experiments in quantum physics in the language of Newtonian physics. That is, they agreed to discuss and report the non-visual, electronic world in the language of the visual world of Newton.”

WorldLanguageMediaDiscoveryFellowsPhysicsExperimentsVisualsReportsQuantumPhysicistNewtonQuantum PhysicsNew DiscoveriesSchrodinger
Author:Marshall McLuhan
Create image