Marshall McLuhan

Marshall McLuhan

30 quotes

Known primarily as a Canadian philosopher and communications scholar, Marshall McLuhan also happens to be one of the most quotable figures in our collection. Celebrated for "the father of media studies", Marshall McLuhan brought that same intensity to the written and spoken word. Discover 34 of Marshall McLuhan's most memorable quotes, ranging across Art, Age, Technology, Society, and Nature. Perhaps their most recognizable line: "It is the framework which changes with each new technology and not just the picture within the frame."

“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.”

— Marshall McLuhan

Technology

All Quotes by Marshall McLuhan

“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

Technology

“If the nineteenth century was the age of the editorial chair, ours is the century of the psychiatrist's couch.”

— Marshall McLuhan

Age

“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

Society

“Art is anything you can get away with.”

— Marshall McLuhan

Art

“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

Business

“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.”

— Marshall McLuhan

Art

“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

Age

“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.”

— Marshall McLuhan

Society

“American youth attributes much more importance to arriving at driver's license age than at voting age.”

— Marshall McLuhan

Age

“Money is a poor man's credit card.”

— Marshall McLuhan

Money

“Great art speaks a language which every intelligent person can understand. The people who call themselves modernists today speak a different language.”

— Marshall McLuhan

Art

“The photograph reverses the purpose of travel, which until now had been to encounter the strange and unfamiliar.”

— Marshall McLuhan

Travel

“It is the framework which changes with each new technology and not just the picture within the frame.”

— Marshall McLuhan

Technology

“Anyone who tries to make a distinction between education and entertainment doesn't know the first thing about either.”

— Marshall McLuhan

Education

“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.”

— Marshall McLuhan

Age

“Advertising is the greatest art form of the 20th century.”

— Marshall McLuhan

Art

“There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew.”

— Marshall McLuhan

Nature

“Mass transportation is doomed to failure in North America because a person's car is the only place where he can be alone and think.”

— Marshall McLuhan

Alone

“Everybody experiences far more than he understands. Yet it is experience, rather than understanding, that influences behavior.”

— Marshall McLuhan

Experience

“Money is just the poor man's credit card.”

— Marshall McLuhan

Money