Marshall McLuhan Quotes

Whether in cave paintings or the latest uses of the Internet, human beings have always told their histories and truths through parable and fable. We are inveterate storytellers.

Language is the most extraordinary invention in the history of humanity, the one which came before everything and which makes it possible to share everything.

As fascinated as I was by words on paper, it was matched by my fascination with words in people's mouths. The spoken word. And that is the world of theatre.

Literature is as old as speech. It grew out of a human need for it, and it has not changed except to become more needed

Language was a huge expansion of that capacity to deal with information.

Every time you read a poem aloud to yourself in the presence of others, you are reading it into yourself and them. Voice helps to carry words farther and deeper than the eye.

Language as a communication tool is the primary element from which literature is created. Even in pre-literate societies, it exists as songs, riddles, or epics that are chanted.

I love to read aloud.

I think cinema has this beautiful component. It's a universal language.

I grew up in an atmosphere where words were an integral part of culture.

Through writing, one experiences something different to what one experiences with the five senses one has because language is a different metier.

Stories that can be told through language and words don't need to be filmed.

As long as there are living human beings, there will be language and stories.

Speech is civilization itself. The word, even the most contradictions word, preserves contact - it is silence which isolates.

Narration is as much a part of human nature as breath and the circulation of the blood.

I suppose there will never be a lack of things to say, of stories to be told and shared.

Somewhere along the way one discovers that what one has to tell is not nearly so important as the telling itself.

Stories are the reproductive organs of language.

Words are the most subtle symbols which we possess and our human fabric depends on them.

The beginning is the word and the end is silence. And in between are all the stories.

When we talk mathematics, we may be discussing a secondary language built on the primary language of the nervous system.

For the storyteller, for the arrowmaker, language does indeed represent the only chance for survival.

I guess storytelling's always been in my blood. My mom said I was always dressing up and jumping in front of the camera and putting on plays. There must be a part of me that has to express that. If we were living in prehistoric clans, I'd probably be sitting by the campfire taking two stones and showing you how dinosaurs were chasing us. I'd be the one finding a way to communicate and perform.

Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas.