War has become the environment of our time if only because it is an accelerated form of innovation and education. (p. 381) - Marshall McLuhan

"It is not brains or intelligence that is needed to cope with the problems with Plato and Aristotle and all of their successors to the present have failed to confront. What is needed is a readiness to undervalue the world altogether. This is only possible for a Christian... All technologies and all cultures, ancient and modern, are part of our immediate expanse. There is hope in this diversity since it creates vast new possibilities of detachment and amusement at human gullibility and self-deception. There is no harm in reminding ourselves from time to time that the "Prince of this World" is a great P.R. man, a great salesman of new hardware and software, a great electric engineer, and a great master of the media. It is his master stroke to be not only environmental but invisible for the environmental is invincibly persuasive when ignored."

Marlowe anticipated Whitman's barbaric yawp by setting up a national PA system of blank verse – a rising iambic system of sound to suit the new success story. (p. 223)

McLuhan after his September 1979 stroke. Brand, Stewart. "McLuhan's last words." New Scientist, 29 Jan 1981.