Marshall McLuhan Quotes

Nothing is really real unless it “happens” on television…Television has brought an inversion of our consciousness. When we take our eyes off the tube, we see things that are not quite authentic – or rather, which gain authenticity only by their resemblance to how things happen on television

History must only guess at the effect that television would have had during earlier conflicts over the future of the nation.

Sometimes you wonder if television is really affecting the culture.

Today there is no greater force in the molding of the North American mind than the invasion of the imagination by the visual media.

We live in an age of rapid mass media, television, Internet. They determine our tempo, not books.

Any understanding of social and cultural change is impossible without a knowledge of the way media work as environments.

Our mass media have little difficulty in selling particular interests as those of all sensible men. The political needs of society become individual needs and aspirations, their satisfaction promotes business and the commonweal, and the whole appeals to be the very embodiment of Reason.

Television changes you. Therefore it is important what you watch and when you watch.

The Press has not only a great influence over our manners and morals, but contributes largely to our pleasures.

First radio, then television, have assaulted and overturned the privacy of the home, the real American privacy, which permitted the development of a higher and more independent life within democratic society. Parents can no longer control the atmosphere of the home and have lost even the will to do so.

I believe television is going to be the test of the modern world, and that in this new opportunity to see beyond the range of our vision we shall discover either a new and unbearable disturbance of the general peace or a saving radiance in the sky. We shall stand or fall by television — of that I am quite sure.

All media exist to invest our lives with artificial perceptions and arbitrary values

The media have entered government as a revolutionary force.

I could do a thousand documentaries on poverty and poor people that would be watched by a handful of the convinced, but I was never really going to have an influence on my times -- (as I might if I develop Sesame Street).

I saw this new thing called television, and I saw people throwing pies in each other's faces, and I thought, 'This could be a wonderful tool for education! Why is it being used this way?' So I said to my parents, 'You know, I don't think I'll go into seminary right away. I think I'll go into television.'

It really is true that when an issue becomes pop culture, it changes faster, and it's really great for the issue.

Television is hypnotic, and it hides among the furniture of your living room. It doesn't reveal itself, but it distorts everything.

Hollywood pushes a liberal agenda to the rest of the country. And, whether we like it or not, Hollywood dictates the culture of the country.

Media truly has the power to create and shift culture.

Political culture has become popular culture.

I think TV, at least most immediately, perhaps more so than film, is a reflection of society.

TV has always been a very strong and powerful medium for women.

I definitely feel that films and TV shows can bring about social change.

The media, and how we're taught to read it, has a huge impact on who we become as people.

Artwork, films, TV - it's always informed my work, no matter what I'm working on.