Ads push the principle of noise all the way to the plateau of persuasion. They are quite in accord with the procedures of brainwashing.

MARSHALL MCLUHAN, Understanding Media

Money is just the poor man's credit card.

MARSHALL MCLUHAN, Understanding Media

Our technology forces us to live mythically.

MARSHALL MCLUHAN, The Medium Is the Message

The ad is a meeting place of all the arts and all the skills and all the media of the American environment.

MARSHALL MCLUHAN, Culture Is Our Business

Advertising is the garment of abundance ... a Masque-like "put on" of all the motifs and actions of our time.

MARSHALL MCLUHAN, Culture Is Our Business

The climate of advertising responds instantly to any social change, making ads in themselves an invaluable means of knowing "where it's at."

MARSHALL MCLUHAN, Culture Is Our Business

The medium is the message.

MARSHALL MCLUHAN, Understanding Media

Any loss of identity prompts people to seek reassurance and rediscovery of themselves by testing, and even by violence. Today, the electric revolution, the wired planet, and the information environment involve everybody in everybody to the point of individual extinction.

MARSHALL MCLUHAN, letter to Clare Westcott, November 26, 1975

We are now in the midst of our first television war ... the television environment [is] total and therefore invisible. Along with the computer, it has altered every phase of the American vision and identity. The television war has meant the end of the dichotomy between civilian and military. The public is now a participant in every phase of the war, and the main actions of the war are now being fought in the American home itself.