The Middle Ages burned its heretics and the modern age threatens them with atom bombs.
Interpretation
The quote critiques society's treatment of dissenters throughout history, contrasting past and modern methods of repression.
Harold Innis highlights a grim evolution in how society deals with those who hold opposing views. While the Middle Ages resorted to physical violence by burning heretics, the modern age metaphorically threatens them with the destructive power of atom bombs, suggesting that contemporary society continues to suppress dissent, albeit in more technologically advanced and devastating ways.
In practice
During a debate on free speech, this quote could illustrate the consequences of societal intolerance.
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.
There's not some idea I'm going to create a work that's going to change everybody's consciousness.
The essence in obedience consists in the fact that a person comes to view himself as an instrument for carrying out another person's wishes and he therefore no longer regards himself as responsible for his actions.
...no matter how complex or affluent, human societies are nothing but subsystems of the biosphere, the Earth's thin veneer of life, which is ultimately run by bacteria, fungi and green plants.
...any belief in supernatural creators, rulers, or influencers of natural or human process introduces an irreparable split into the universe, and prevents us from grasping its real unity. Any belief in Absolutes, whether the absolute validity of moral commandments, of authority of revelation, of inner certitudes, or of divine inspiration, erects a formidable barrier against progress and the responsibility of improvement, moral, rational, and religious.
I don't care about age very much.
For outward show is a wonderful perverter of the reason.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.