Marshall McLuhan Quotes

I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others.

People who are divided are easier to control.

If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual.

Those who make some other person their job... are dangerous.

And this is the Anarchistic definition of the State: the embodiment of the principle of invasion in an individual, or a band of individuals, assuming to act as representatives or masters of the entire people within a given area.

Power over others is weakness disguised as strength.

Once a person insists on how you are to think he immediately begins to insist on how you are to behave.

… the tools of despotism and corruption

A totalitarian society makes enormous demands on the courage of men, and a partially totalitarian society makes even greater demands because the general anxiety is greater.

Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny

Either you think, or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you.

I think it's a dangerous thing for anyone to have power over other people.

It is the old practice of despots to use a part of the people to keep the rest in order.

Authority, as you usually think of it, is merely the excuse the strong use to make others conform to what they want.

Those who keep the masses of men in subjection by exercising force and cruelty deprive them at once of two vital foods, liberty and obedience; for it is no longer within the power of such masses to accord their inner consent to the authority to which they are subjected. Those who encourage a state of things in which the hope of gain is the principle motive take away from men their obedience, for consent which is its essence is not something which can be sold.

Power not only corrupts he who wields the power but those who submit to it. Those who grovel at the feet of power betray their fellows to hide themselves behind the cloak of submission. It is an evil thing.

When man has nothing but his will to assert--even his good-will--it is always bullying. Bolshevism is one sort of bullying, capitalism another: and liberty is a change of chains.

The oppressor has always indoctrinated the weak with his interpretation of the crimes of the strong.

For the power of Man to make himself what he pleases means... the power of some men to make other men what THEY please.

Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying themselves, or, more generally, in the acquisition of power.

One hopes that they'll never be able to use mind control weapons, because we're all done for if that happens. I don't want military people, or political people, to have that type of power over those of us who just get by from day to day.

How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words!

I call the discourse of power any discourse that engenders blame, hence guilt, in its recipient.

Beware the tyranny of the weak. They just suck you dry.

Fear of death has been the greatest ally of tyranny past and present.