Marshall McLuhan Quotes

"Canada is the only country in the world that knows how to live without an identity"

"Of the many unforeseen consequences of typography, the emergence of nationalism is, perhaps, the most familiar"

"Advertising is the greatest art form of the twentieth century."

"Advertising is an environmental striptease for a world of abundance."

"Good wine needs no bush, and perhaps products that people really want need no hard-sell or soft-sell TV push. Why not? Look at pot."

"The computer is the most extraordinary of man's technological clothing; it's an extension of our central nervous system. Beside it, the wheel is a mere hula-hoop."

"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."

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

"Innumerable confusions and a feeling of despair invariably emerge in periods of great technological and cultural transition."

"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."

"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"."

"It is critical vision alone which can mitigate the unimpeded operation of the automatic."

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

"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."

"There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew."

"The new electronic independence re-creates the world in the image of a global village."

"Transmitted at the speed of light, all events on this planet are simultaneous. In the electric environment of information all events are simultaneous, there is no time or space separating events."

"The past went that-a-way. When faced with a totally new situation, we tend always to attach ourselves to the objects, to the flavor of the most recent past. We look at the present through a rear view mirror. We march backwards into the future."

"Advertising is the greatest art form of the 20th century."

"Ads are the cave art of the twentieth century."