Marshall McLuhan Quotes

We will pass on a document will not have exactly the same meaning it had when we received it from our fathers.

We are paying a heavy political price for 20 years in which, as a party, we have played down our criticism of capitalism and soft-peddled our advocacy of socialism

Faced with information overload, we have no alternative but pattern-recognition.

In sum, the struggle for our future is . . . the struggle between those who cling to patterns of domination and those working for a more equitable partnership world.

The medium, or process, of our time - electric technology is reshaping and restructuring patterns of social interdependence and every aspect of our personal life. It is forcing us to reconsider and re-evaluate practically every thought, every action.

My links with [Mahatma] Gandhi now are very political links because I do not believe there is any other politics available to us in the late twentieth century, a period of a totalitarianism linked with the market. There is really no other way you can do politics and create freedom for people without the kinds of instruments he revived. Civil disobedience is a way to create permanent democracy, perennial democracy, a direct democracy.

The energy I was sensing in audiences was political energy, as much as anything else.

The greatest and most powerful revolutions often start very quietly, hidden in the shadows. Remember that.

I'm a spiritual musician, I think there has been enough political musicians and I think everything that can be said has been said about political, social things, you know, and there's still some more to be said but not much.

Management is the gate through which social and economic and political change, indeed change in every direction, is diffused though society.

Culture and politics were inseparable [in the Sixties], which gave a soundtrack to political awareness and activism.

The world will not know liberty until all that is religious and political is transformed into something simple and human and made susceptible to criticism and denial.

Because one of the properties of music is to entertain and to, I don't mean this lightly, distract us from the things that pull us down. Music should be not only a source for political ideas but also a source of hope.

Predatory capitalism created a complex industrial system and an advanced technology; it permitted a considerable extension of democratic practice and fostered certain liberal values, but within limits that are now being pressed and must be overcome. It is not a fit system for the mid-twentieth century.

That part of the Englishman's nature which has found gratification in religion is now drifting into political life.

Democracy was regarded as entering into a crisis in the 1960s. The crisis was that large segments of the population were becoming organized and active and trying to participate in the political arena.

I think we're all enmeshed in this political system that is devoted to controlling reproduction. You didn't invent it; I didn't invent it. Thirty percent of us are trying to preserve it, and 70 percent are trying to change it. We're not active enough or voting enough or mad enough.

I made the decision that my contribution needed to be more musical than political. My music was enough, politically. Art matters. Art was enough. My music was enough to say what I had to say.

The truth is we have a political system and an economic system controlled by a few extremely wealthy people. Not Barack Obama, not Bernie Sanders, no one person has the influence by himself or herself to take on this enormous array of power unless millions of people begin to work together to demand changes.

It is very unlikely that the computer will displace the books, except in areas where we need information speedily.

People need to know what's going on. People need to wake up.

The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected.

I live to the rhythm of my country and I cannot remain on the sidelines. I want to be here. I want to be part of it. I want to be a witness. I want to walk arm in arm with it. I want to hear it more and more, to cradle it, to carry it like a medal on my chest. Activism is a constant element in my life, even though afterwards I anguish over not having written 'my own things.' Testimonial literature provides evidence of events that people would like to hide, denounces and therefore is political and part of a country in which everything remains to be done and documented.

We have to craft new political realities, not only in places like India, Afghanistan, Kenya, Pakistan, but here at home as well. Another world is possible.

If we were to promise people nothing better than only revolution, they would scratch their heads and say: 'Is it not better to have good goulash?'