A biography for Marshall McLuhanhasn’t been written yet.
“I don't necessarily agree with everything that I say.”
“Only the vanquished remember history.”
“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.”
“We become what we behold. We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us.”
“Ideally, advertising aims at the goal of a programmed harmony among all human impulses and aspirations and endeavors. Using handicraft methods, it stretches out toward the ultimate electronic goal of a collective consciousness.”
“In Jesus Christ, there is no distance or separation between the medium and the message: it is the one case where we can say that the medium and the message are fully one and the same.”
“Anyone who tries to make a distinction between education and entertainment doesn't know the first thing about either.”
“I don't necessarily agree with everything I say.”
“Good taste is the first refuge of the non-creative. It is the last-ditch stand of the artist.”
“Darkness is to space what silence is to sound, i.e., the interval.”
“Obsolescence never meant the end of anything, it's just the beginning.”
“Ads are the cave art of the twentieth century.”
“The scientist rigorously defends his right to be ignorant of almost everything except his specialty.”
“Advertising is an environmental striptease for a world of abundance.”
“The more the data banks record about each one of us, the less we exist.”
“Antipathy, dissimilarity of views, hate, contempt, can accompany true love.”
“In this electronic age we see ourselves being translated more and more into the form of information, moving toward the technological extension of consciousness.”
“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.”
“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.”
“All media exist to invest our lives with artificial perceptions and arbitrary values.”