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Most People Are Alive In An Earlier Time, But You Must Be Alive In Our Own Time.
-Marshall McLuhan
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Most People Are Alive

Marshall McLuhan
...
Most People Are Alive In An Earlier Time, But You Must Be Alive In Our Own Time.

Understanding the Quote: "most people are alive in an earlier time, but you must be..."

This quote by Marshall McLuhan reflects deeply on the theme of people. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under People, Alive, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Marshall McLuhan interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Marshall McLuhan

Marshall McLuhan is celebrated for insightful thoughts on people and alive. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
People
Alive
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The Specialist Is One Who Never Makes Small Mistakes While Moving Toward The Grand Fallacy.
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Innovation For Holders Of Conventional Wisdom Is Not Novelty But Annihilation.
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"work" Does Not Exist In A Nonliterate World. The Primitive Hunter Or Fisherman Did No Work, Any More Than Does The Poet, Painter, Or Thinker Of Today. Where The Whole Man Is Involved There Is No Work.
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To See A Man Slip On A Banana Skin Is To See A Rationally Structured System Suddenly Translated Into A Whirling Machine.
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I Am Resolutely Opposed To All Innovation, All Change, But I Am Determined To Understand What’s Happening. Because I Don’t Choose Just To Sit And Let The Juggernaut Roll Over Me. Many People Seem To Think That If You Talk About Something Recent, You’re In Favor Of It. The Exact Opposite Is True In My Case. Anything I Talk About Is Almost Certainly Something I’m Resolutely Against. And It Seems To Me The Best Way To Oppose It Is To Understand It. And Then You Know Where To Turn Off The Buttons.
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The Business Of Art Is No Longer The Communication Of Thoughts Or Feelings Which Are To Be Conceptually Ordered, But A Direct Participation In An Experience. The Whole Tendency Of Modern Communication...is Towards Participation In A Process, Rather Than Apprehension Of Concepts.
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Mediums
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Wire
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People
Soul
The Future Masters Of Technology Will Have To Be Light-hearted And Intelligent. The Machine Easily Masters The Grim And The Dumb.
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Technology
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Realizing
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Dew
Culture
The Printing Press Was At First Mistaken For An Engine Of Immortality By Everybody Except Shakespeare.
Firsts
Immortality
Printing
Einstein Pronounced The Doom Of Continuous Or 'rational' Space, And The Way Was Made Clear For Picasso And The Marx Brothers And Mad Magazine.
Brother
Space
Mad
In Jesus Christ, There Is No Distance Or Separation Between The Medium And The Message: It Is The One Case Where We Can Say That The Medium And The Message Are Fully One And The Same.
Jesus
Distance
Messages
Explore The Situation. Statements Are Expendable. Don't Keep On Looking In The Rearview Mirror And Defending The Status Quo Which Is Outmoded The Moment It Happened.
Mirrors
Moments
Status Quo
As A Rule, I Always Look For What Others Ignore.
Looks
What Is Very Little Understood About The Electronic Age Is That It Angelizes Man, Disembodies Him. Turns Him Into Software.
Men
Age
Littles
What Goes On Inside The School Is An Interruption Of Education.
School
Goes On
Interruptions
Historians And Archaeologists Will One Day Discover That The Ads Of Our Time Are The Richest And Most Faithful Reflections That Any Society Ever Made Of Its Entire Range Of Activities.
Reflection
Faithful
One Day
The Business Of The Advertiser Is To See That We Go About Our Business With Some Magic Spell Or Tune Or Slogan Throbbing Quietly In The Background Of Our Minds.
Magic
Mind
Tunes
The Copy Of An Ad Is Merely A Punning Gag To Distract The Critical Faculties While The Image Of The Product Goes To Work On The Hypnotized Viewer. Those Who Have Spent Their Lives Protesting About 'false And Misleading Ad Copy' Are Godsends To Advertisers, As Teetotalers Are To Brewers, And Moral Censors Are To Books And Films. The Protesters Are The Best Acclaimers And Accelerators. Since The Advent Of Pictures, The Job Of The Ad Copy Is As Incidental And Latent As The 'meaning' Of A Poem Is To A Poem, Or The Words Of A Song Are To A Song.
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Book
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Movie
Creativity
Media
If The Work Of The City Is The Remaking Or Translating Of Man Into A More Suitable Form Than His Nomadic Ancestors Achieved, Then Might Not Our Current Translation Of Our Entire Lives Into The Spiritual Form Of Information Seem To Make Of The Entire.
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Men
Cities
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Errors
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Perception
Arbitrary
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Confused
Worship
Sincerity
The Car Has Become An Article Of Dress Without Which We Feel Uncertain, Unclad, And Incomplete In The Urban Compound.
Science
Technology
Car
Ours Is A Brand-new World Of Allatonceness [all-at-once-ness]. 'time' Has Ceased, 'space' Has Vanished. We Now Live In A Global Village ... A Simultaneous Happening. ... The New Electronic Interdependence Recreates The World In The Image Of A Global Village.
Science
Space
World
Fish Did Not Discover Water.
Water
Fishes
The Hallucinogenic World, In Environmental Terms, Can Be Considered As A Forlorn Effort Of Man To Match The Speed Of Power Of Hisextended Nervous System (which We Call The "electronic World") By Intensifying The Activity Of His Inner Nervous System.
Men
Effort
World
Television Is Teaching All The Time. Does More Educating Than The Schools And All The Institutions Of Higher Learning.
Teaching
School
Doe
Radio Affects Most Intimately, Person-to-person, Offering A World Of Unspoken Communication Between Writer-speaker And The Listener.
Communication
Offering
World
The New Media Are Not Bridges Between Man And Nature - They Are Nature...
Men
Bridges
Media
The Future Of Work Consists Of Learning A Living.
Inspirational
Entrepreneur
Politics Offers Yesterday's Answers To Today's Problems.
Yesterday
Answers
Today
All The New Media Are Art Forms Which Have The Power Of Imposing, Like Poetry, Their Own Assumptions.
Art
Technology
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.
Loss
People
Identity
Electronic Man Has No Physical Body.
Men
Body
Physical Body
The Young Today Cannot Follow Narrative But They Are Alert To Drama. They Cannot Bear Description But They Love Landscape And Action.
Drama
Landscape
Narrative
As Information Becomes Our Environment, It Becomes Mandatory To Program The Environment Itself As A Work Of Art.
Art
Information
Environment
In An Age Of Multiple And Massive Innovations, Obsolescence Becomes The Major Obsession.
Innovation
Age
Obsession
When Two Seemingly Disparate Elements Are Imaginatively Poised Put In Apposition In New And Unique Ways, Startling Discoveries Often Result.
Unique
Discovery
Two
Typography Is Not Only A Technology But Is In Itself A Natural Resource Or Staple, Like Cotton Or Timber Or Radio; And, Like Any Staple, It Shapes Not Only Private Sense Ratios But Also Patterns Of Communal Interdependence.
Technology
Shapes
Patterns
On Spaceship Earth There Are No Passengers; Everybody Is A Member Of The Crew. We Have Moved Into An Age In Which Everybody's Activities Affect Everybody Else.
Age
Earth
Spaceships
Anything That's Popular Is A Rear-view Image.
Views
Independence
Rear View
The Real News Is Bad News.
Real
News
Journalism
The Global Village Is A Place Of Very Arduous Interfaces And Very Abrasive Situations.
Village
Situation
Interfaces
The Tribalizing Power Of The New Electronic Media, The Way In Which They Return To Us To The Unified Fields Of The Old Oral Cultures, To Tribal Cohesion And Pre-individualist Patterns Of Thought, Is Little Understood. Tribalism Is The Sense Of The Deep Bond Of Family, The Closed Society As The Norm Of Community.
Media
Community
Culture
The Medium, Or Process, Of Our Time - Electric Technology Is Reshaping And Restructuring Patterns Of Social Interdependence And Every Aspect Of Our Personal Life. It Is Forcing Us To Reconsider And Re-evaluate Practically Every Thought, Every Action.
Technology
Patterns
Action
The Ordinary Person Senses The Greatness Of The Odds Against Him Even Without Thought Or Analysis, And He Adapts His Attitudes Unconsciously. A Huge Passivity Has Settled On Industrial Society. For People Carried About In Mechanical Vehicles, Earning Their Living By Waiting On Machines, Listening Much Of The Waking Day To Canned Music, Watching Packaged Movie Entertainment And Capsulated News, For Such People It Would Require An Exceptional Degree Of Awareness And An Especial Heroism Of Effort To Be Anything But Supine Consumers Of Processed Goods.
Attitude
Greatness
Odds
Our Technology Forces Us To Live Mythically, But We Continue To Think Fragmentarily, And On Single, Separate Planes.
Technology
Thinking
Force
If The Nineteenth Century Was The Age Of The Editorial Chair, Ours Is The Century Of The Psychiatrist's Couch.
Birthday
Age
Chairs
Throughout Finnegans Wake Joyce Specifies The Tower Of Babel As The Tower Of Sleep, That Is, The Tower Of The Witless Assumption, Or What Bacon Calls The Reign Of The Idols.
Sleep
Idols
Tower Of Babel
The New Electronic Independence Re-creates The World In The Image Of A Global Village.
Science
Independence
World
I'm Not Sure Who Discovered Water, But I'm Pretty Sure It Wasn't A Fish.
Water
Not Sure
Fishes
The Artist Is The Man In Any Field, Scientific Or Humanistic, Who Grasps The Implications Of His Actions And Of New Knowledge In His Own Time. He Is The Man Of Integral Awareness.
Art
Men
Fields
The 'expert' Is The Man Who Stays Put.
Men
Experts
He Man
Our Technology Forces Us To Live Mythically
Technology
Force
Current Illusion Is That Science Has Abolished All Natural Laws.
Nature
Science
Law
Today's Child Is Growing Up Absurd, Because He Lives In Two Worlds, And Neither Of Them Inclines Him To Grow Up. Growing Up--thatis Our New Work, And It Is Total. Mere Instruction Will Not Suffice.
Education
Children
Growing Up
Trending Author
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Category
Information