“Societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate than by the content of the communication.”
Communication
“Historians and archaeologists will one day discover that the ads of our time are the richest and most faithful reflections that any society ever made of its entire range of activities.”
SocietyAll Quotes by Marshall McLuhan
“There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew.”
Nature“It is the framework which changes with each new technology and not just the picture within the frame.”
Technology“The spoken word was the first technology by which man was able to let go of his environment in order to grasp it in a new way.”
Technology“Advertising is the greatest art form of the 20th century.”
Art“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.”
Society“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.”
Business“The car has become the carapace, the protective and aggressive shell, of urban and suburban man.”
Car“As technology advances, it reverses the characteristics of every situation again and again. The age of automation is going to be the age of 'do it yourself.'”
Age“The photograph reverses the purpose of travel, which until now had been to encounter the strange and unfamiliar.”
Travel“If the nineteenth century was the age of the editorial chair, ours is the century of the psychiatrist's couch.”
Age“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.”
Technology“Anyone who tries to make a distinction between education and entertainment doesn't know the first thing about either.”
Education“In this electronic age we see ourselves being translated more and more into the form of information, moving toward the technological extension of consciousness.”
Age“Money is a poor man's credit card.”
Money“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.”
Age“Ads are the cave art of the twentieth century.”
Art“Art at its most significant is a Distant Early Warning System that can always be relied on to tell the old culture what is beginning to happen to it.”
Art“Historians and archaeologists will one day discover that the ads of our time are the richest and most faithful reflections that any society ever made of its entire range of activities.”
Society“Advertising is an environmental striptease for a world of abundance.”
Environmental