Quotes from the single

This is the Quotes From The Single category.

Quotes from the 45RPM promo (1967) of “The Medium is the Massage” including selected five and ten second spots for DJ’s with locked grooves. Written by Marshall McLuhan, Quentin Fiore and Jerome Agel. More information via discogs.com.

“We shape our toes and thereafter our toes ape us.”

“Our electrically-configured world has forced us to move from the habit of data classification to the mode of pattern recognition. We can no longer build serially, block-by-block, step-by-step, because instant communication insures that all factors of the environment and of experience co-exist in a state of active interplay.”

— Marshall McLuhan

“Uh, professor McLuhan”

“Terrific!”

“Now, what then?”

— Marshall McLuhan

“You mean, life isn’t a fountain?”

“This last week was like a total breakdown.”

— Franz Kafka, “Diaries”

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

— Marshall McLuhan, see also “The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man”, p. 42

“The medium is the massage. {The medium is the massage.}”

— parrot

“Nowadays a fact is what has been translated into words or images. [Those qualities cease form to combine fact and drag me upon the opinion of acquainted wit.]”

— Jacques Ellul, “The Political Illusion”

“Marshall McLuhan”, “Marshall McLuhan.”

— parrot

“There ain’t no grammatical errors in a non-literate society.”

— Marshall McLuhan, see also “The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man”, p. 238

“A fact of interplay.”

— Marshall McLuhan

“1-2, 1-2-3-4”

“Our time is a time for crossing barriers, for erasing old categories—[for looking ahead,] for probing around”

— Marshall McLuhan

“When two seemingly disparate elements are imaginatively apposed, put in apposition in new and unique ways, startling discoveries often result.”

— Marshall McLuhan

“[John Cage, a composer of new music, has stated:] “Everything we do is music.””

— John Cage, quoted by Calvin Tomkins in “The Bride and the Bachelors”

“How do you like it so far?”

“Drop this jiggery-pokery and talk straight turkey.”

— James Joyce, “Finnegans Wake”

“Baby, this thing is bigger than all of us.”

“The
Medium
Is the
Massage.”

— Marshall McLuhan

“I wouldn’t be seen dead with a living work of art.”

— Museum Curator

“There’ll probably be some music, but we’ll manage to find a quiet corner where we can talk.”

— Erik Satie, quoted in “Silence: Lectures and Writings” by John Cage

“[The medium of our time,] electric circuitry, profoundly involves men with one another. Information pours upon us, instantaneously and continuously. As soon as information is acquired, it is very rapidly replaced by still newer information.”

— Marshall McLuhan