Marshall McLuhan

Marshall McLuhan
Herbert Marshall McLuhan, CCwas a Canadian professor, philosopher, and public intellectual. His work is viewed as one of the cornerstones of the study of media theory, as well as having practical applications in the advertising and television industries. He was educated at the University of Manitoba and Cambridge University and began his teaching career as a Professor of English at several universities in the U.S. and Canada, before moving to the University of Toronto where he would remain for the...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth21 July 1911
CityEdmonton, Canada
CountryCanada
Poetry and the arts can’t exist in America. Mere exposure to the arts does nothing for a mentality which is incorrigibly dialectical. The vital tensions and nutritive action of ideogram remain inaccessible to this state of mind.
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.
Ads are carefully designed by the Madison Avenue frog-men of-the-mind for semiconscious exposure.
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.
Food for the mind is like food for the body: the inputs are never the same as the outputs.
It is perhaps typical of very creative minds that they hit very large nails not quite on the head.
There is an enormous redundancy in every well-written book. With a well-written book I only read the right-hand page and allow my mind to work on the left-hand page. With a poorly written book I read every word.
Far more thought and care go into the composition of any prominent ad in a newspaper or magazine than go into the writing of their features and editorials
Money is just the poor man's credit card.
Good taste is the first refuge of the non-creative. It is the last-ditch stand of the artist.
ONLY THE SMALL SECRETS NEED TO BE PROTECTED.THE BIG ONES ARE KEPT SECRET BY PUBLIC INCREDULITY.
We have become irrevocably involved with, and responsible for, each other.
Darkness is to space what silence is to sound, i.e., the interval.
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.