7 Marshall McLuhan Quotes on Culture

Marshall McLuhan quotes on culture

5. We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us.

17. Another theme of the Wake that helps in the understanding of the paradoxical shift from cliche to archetype is 'pastimes are past times'. The dominant technologies of one age become the games and pastimes of a later age. In the twentieth century the number of past times that are simultaneously available is so vast as to create cultural anarchy. When all the cultures of the world are simultaneously present, the work of the artist in the elucidation of form takes on new scope and new urgency. Most men are pushed into the artist role. The artist cannot dispense with the principle of doubleness and interplay since this kind of hendiadys-dialogue is essential to the very structure of consciousness, awareness, and autonomy. (p.99)

27. Although meaningless in a tribal context, numbers and statistics assume mythic and magical qualities of infallibility in literate societies. (p.114)

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

42. People don't actually read newspapers. They step into them every morning like a hot bath.

43. All advertising advertises advertising.

64. The artist is the only person; his antennae pick up these messages before anybody. So he is always thought of as being way ahead of his time because he lives in the present. (1970)