One matter Englishmen don't think in the least funny is their happy consciousness of possessing a deep sense of humor.

— Marshall McLuhan

One thing about which fish know exactly nothing is water, since they have no anti-environment which would enable them to perceive the element they live in.

— Marshall McLuhan

Only the vanquished remember history.

— Marshall McLuhan

Our Age of Anxiety is, in great part, the result of trying to do today’s jobs with yesterday’s tools!

— Marshall McLuhan

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

Our technology forces us to live mythically

— Marshall McLuhan

Politics will eventually be replaced by imagery. The politician will be only too happy to abdicate in favor of his image, because the image will be much more powerful than he could ever be.

— Marshall McLuhan

Publication is a self-invasion of privacy.

— Marshall McLuhan

Rationality or consciousness is itself a ratio or proportion among the sensuous components of experience, and is not something added to such sense experience. Subnational beings have no means of achieving such a ratio or proportion in their sense lives but are wired for fixed wave lengths, as it were, having infallibility in their own area of experience. Consciousness, complex and subtle, can be impaired or ended by a mere stepping-up or dimming-down of any one sense intensity, which is the procedure in hypnosis. And the intensification of one sense by a new medium can hypnotize an entire community.

— Marshall McLuhan

Societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate than by the content of the communication.

— Marshall McLuhan