“Disarmament is illogical and futile, unless one is prepared to regard the available means of production and social organization as affording unique social ends. To divert electrical energy and circuitry into atomic bombs shows the same imaginative power as wiring the dining-room chairs to enable one to electrocute the sitter in the event that he might prove hostile. It is part of the age-old habit of using new means for old purposes instead of discovering what are the new goals contained in the new means.”

Source: 1970s, From Cliché to Archetype (1970), p.202

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Disarmament is illogical and futile, unless one is prepared to regard the available means of production and social orga…" by Marshall McLuhan?
Marshall McLuhan photo
Marshall McLuhan 416
Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor … 1911–1980

Related quotes

Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse photo
Rudolf Karl Bultmann photo

“We cannot use electric lights and radios and, in the event of illness, avail ourselves of modern medical and clinical means and at the same time believe in the spirit and wonder world of the New Testament.”

Rudolf Karl Bultmann (1884–1976) German theologian

Man kann nicht elektrisches Licht und Radioapparat benutzen, in Krankheitsfällen moderne medizinische und klinische Mittel in Anspruch nehmen und gleichzeitig an die Geister-und Wunderwelt des Neuen Testaments glauben.
Source: New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings (1941), p. 4

Clive Staples Lewis photo

“For me, reason is the natural organ of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning. Imagination, producing new metaphors or revivifying old, is not the cause of truth, but its condition.”

Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist

"Bluspels and Flalansferes: A Semantic Nightmare", Rehabilitations and Other Essays (1939)

Winston S. Churchill photo

“The Old and New Testaments contain but one scheme of religion. Neither part of this scheme can be understood without the other.”

Richard Cecil (clergyman) (1748–1810) British Evangelical Anglican priest and social reformer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 32.

Emma Goldman photo
Friedrich Engels photo
Adolf Hitler photo

“We shall banish want; we shall banish fear. The essence of National Socialism is human welfare…. National Socialism is the revolution of the common man. Rooted in a fuller life for every German from childhood to old age, National Socialism means a new day of abundance at home and a better world order abroad.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

As quoted in Men in Motion, Henry J. Taylor, Doubleday, Doran & Co., New York: NY, (1944) p. 59. Also quoted in As We Go Marching, John T. Flynn, New York: NY, Free Life Edition (1973) p. 154, first published 1944 https://mises-media.s3.amazonaws.com/As%20We%20Go%20Marching_2.pdf
Other remarks

Related topics