12 Quotes by Harold Innis

Democracy will defeat the economist at every turn on its own genre.

Industrialism implies technology and the cutting of time into precise fragments suited to the needs of the engineer and the accountant.

The Middle Ages burned its heretics and the modern age threatens them with atom bombs.

Following the invention of writing, the special form of heightened language, characteristic of the oral tradition and a collective society, gave way to private writing. Records and messages displaced the collective memory. Poetry was written and detached from the collective festival.

The history of Canada has been profoundly influenced by the habits of an animal which very fittingly occupies a prominent place on her coat of arms.

We have not yet realized that the Indian and his culture were fundamental to the growth of Canadian institutions.

The mixture of the oral and the written traditions in the writings of Plato enabled him to dominate the history of the West.

Graham Wallas has reminded us that writing as compared with speaking involves an impression at the second remove and reading an impression at the third remove. The voice of a second-rate person is more impressive than the published opinion of superior ability.

The overwhelming pressure of mechanization evident in the newspaper and the magazine, has led to the creation of vast monopolies of communication. Their entrenched positions involve a continuous, systematic, ruthless destruction of elements of permanence essential to cultural activity.