Marshall McLuhan Quotes

We need to make sure we are constantly staying ahead, thinking about what is coming.

One cannot manage change. One can only be ahead of it.

Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now.

My business is to prevent the future.

You must always be able to predict what's next and then have the flexibility to evolve.

Radicals must be resilient, adaptable to shifting political circumstances, and sensitive enough to the process of action and reaction to avoid being trapped by their own tactics and forced to travel a road not of their choosing. In short, radicals must have a degree of control over the flow of events.

When you are running a business, there is a constant need to reinvent oneself. One should have the foresight to stay ahead in times of rapid change and rid ourselves of stickiness in any form in the business.

You don't know what's going to happen in our business a year from now... so you have to be flexible and adaptable, and that's what we try to do.

We have a choice. We can shape our future, or let events shape it for us. And if we want to succeed, we can't fall back on the stale debates and old divides that won't move us forward.

There's an old Wayne Gretzky quote that I love. 'I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.' And we've always tried to do that at Apple. Since the very, very beginning. And we always will.

Expect change. Analyze the landscape. Take the opportunities. Stop being the chess piece; become the player. It's your move.

An inch of foreknowledge is worth ten miles of after-thought.

The one who anticipates the action wins. The one who does not, loses.

You can analyse the past, but you have to design the future

I know that with most companies that have a lot of success, it tends to throw you off, and you can become more conservative. One of our questions is, How do we keep from being pulled into conservatism because we're afraid of not being successful again?

I want to keep different options for different futures open all the time.

Tomorrow always arrives. It is always different. And even the mightiest company is in trouble if it has not worked on the future. Being surprised by what happens is a risk that even the largest and richest company cannot afford, and even the smallest business need not run.

Keeping a little ahead of conditions is one of the secrets of business; the trailer seldom goes far.

It is better to anticipate than to react.

It's better to be in charge of change than to have to react to change.

The pace of change is so great, there is always something else going on. What that says to me is that you have to have strategic vision and peripheral vision. Strategic vision is the ability to look ahead and peripheral vision is the ability to look around, and both are important.

You must be on top of change or change will be on top of you.

We believe in the wisdom once expressed by the hockey star Wayne Gretzky, who explained his success by saying, 'I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.'

To deal with future we have to deal with possibilities. Analysis will only tell us what is.

I do not like the phrase: Never cross a bridge till you come to it. The world is owned by men who cross bridges on their imaginations miles and miles in advance of the procession.