Quote

A new medium is never an addition to an old one, nor does it leave the old one in peace. It never ceases to oppress the older media until it finds new shapes and positions for them.

Marshall McLuhan

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Marshall McLuhan
Age: 69 †
Born: 1911
Born: July 21
Died: 1980
Died: December 31
Literary Critic
Philosopher
Sociologist
University Teacher
Writer
Edmonton
Alberta
Herbert Marshall McLuhan
Marshall MacLuhan
Marshall Mac Luhan
Peace
Mediums
Doe
Finds
Never
Cease
Older
Oppress
Shapes
Ceases
Leave
Addition
Position
Positions
Media
Medium

More quotes by Marshall McLuhan

Image
Youth instinctively understand the present environment - the electric drama. It lives mythically and in depth.
Marshall McLuhan
Image
I do not explain, I explore.
Marshall McLuhan
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.
Marshall McLuhan
Image
In the Phaedrus, Plato argued that the new arrival of writing would revolutionize culture for the worst. He suggested that it would substitute reminiscence for thought and mechanical learning for the true dialect of the living quest for truth by discourse and conversation.
Marshall McLuhan
Image
In Tetrad form, the artifact is seen to be not neutral or passive, bur an active logos or utterance of the human mind or body that transforms the user and his ground.
Marshall McLuhan
Image
Ads represent the main channel of intellectual and artistic effort in the modern world.
Marshall McLuhan
Image
Language always preserves a play or figure/ground relation between experience, and perception and its replay in expression.
Marshall McLuhan
Image
Language as the technology of human extension, whose powers of division and separation we know so well, may have been the Tower of Babel by which men sought to scale the highest heavens. Today computers hold out the promise of a means of instant tr
Marshall McLuhan
Image
Work does not exist in a nonliterate world. The primitive hunter or fisherman did no work, any more than does the poet, painter, or thinker of today. Where the whole man is involved there is no work.
Marshall McLuhan
Image
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
Image
Language does for intelligence what the wheel does for the feet and the body. It enables them to move from thing to thing with greater ease and speed and ever less involvement.
Marshall McLuhan
Image
Today the tyrant rules not by club or fist, but disguised as a market researcher, he shepherds his flocks in the ways of utility and comfort.
Marshall McLuhan
Image
Explore the situation. Statements are expendable. Don't keep on looking in the rearview mirror and defending the status quo which is outmoded the moment it happened.
Marshall McLuhan
Image
The young today cannot follow narrative but they are alert to drama. They cannot bear description but they love landscape and action.
Marshall McLuhan
Image
Once you see the boundaries of your environment, they are no longer the boundaries of your environment.
Marshall McLuhan
Image
When people become too intense, too serious, they will have trouble in relating to any sort of social game or norm. Perhaps this is why jokes are so important. On one hand they tell us about where the problems and grievances are, and, at the same time, they provide the means of enduring these grievances by laughing at the problems.
Marshall McLuhan
Image
At electric speed, all forms are pushed to the limits of their potential.
Marshall McLuhan
Image
My main theme is the extension of the nervous system in the electric age, and thus, the complete break with five thousand years of mechanical technology. This I state over and over again. I do not say whether it is a good or bad thing. To do so would be meaningless and arrogant.
Marshall McLuhan
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.
Marshall McLuhan
Image
The task confronting contemporary man is to live with the hidden ground of his activities as familiarly as our literate predecessors lived with the figure minus ground.
Marshall McLuhan