Marshall McLuhan Quotes

The force of the advertising word and image dwarfs the power of other literature in the 20th century.

Propaganda in the ordinary sense of the term plays a less important part in a consumer society, where people greet all official pronouncements with suspicion.

Advertising has done more to cause the social unrest of the 20th century than any other single factor.

The first step toward maintaining autonomy in any programmed environment is to be aware that there's programming going on. It's as simple as understanding the commercials are there to help sell things. And that TV shows are there to sell commercials, and so on.

With the supermarket as our temple and the singing commercial as our litany, are we likely to fire the world with an irresistible vision of America's exalted purpose and inspiring way of life?

Advertising is the greatest art form of the 20th century.

Whoever controls the media, controls the mind.

The engine of ancient society was religion but the engine of contemporary society, as I see it, is advertising.

Slogans are both exciting and comforting, but they are also powerful opiates for the conscience.

The men who run the Eisenhower Administration evidently believe that the minds of Americans can be manipulated by shows, slogans and the arts of advertising … The men who run the Eisenhower Administration evidently believe that the minds of Americans can be manipulated by shows, slogans and the arts of advertising

The number one rule of today's marketing – the key secret of those who seek to control your beliefs and habits in order to take your money, your votes, your time or whatever else it is they desire from you – is to always keep in mind that nobody really believes they can be manipulated.

You cannot control your own population by force, but it can be distracted by consumption.

With a new familiarity and a flesh-creeping homeliness entirely of this unreal, materialistic world, where all sentiment is coarsely manufactured and advertised in colossal sickly captions, disguised for the sweet tooth of a monstrous baby called the Public, the family as it is, broken up on all hands by the agency of feminist and economic propaganda, reconstitutes itself in the image of the state.

See we just had a misunderstanding. I thought we lived in the U.S. of A., the United States of America. But actually we live in the U.S. of A., the United States of Advertising. Freedom of expression is guaranteed? If you've got the money!

Ads are the cave art of the twentieth century.

In the area we're discussing, leadership begins on Madison Avenue, on the desks and in the offices of people who spend hundreds of millions of dollars buying what will get them ratings.

It is advertising and the logic of consumerism that governs the depiction of reality in the mass media.

Business today consists in persuading crowds.

I think that reality TV is so bad. It is a tool by the media to not make people think.

There's no denying that television is one of the most powerful propaganda media we've ever invented.

Philosophically, I don't like doing commercials.

The orchestration of press, radio and television to create a continuous, lasting and total environment renders the influence of propaganda virtually unnoticed precisely because it creates a constant environment.

The bosses of our mass media, press, radio, film and television, succeed in their aim of taking our minds off disaster. Thus, the distraction they offer demands the antidote of maximum concentration on disaster.

And, consequently, the art of propaganda or public information becomes one of the most powerful forms of directive statesmanship.

Publicity is the life of this culture - in so far as without publicity capitalism could not survive - and at the same time publicity is its dream.