Message

A message is a discrete unit of communication intended by the source for consumption by some recipient or group of recipients. A message may be delivered by various means, including courier, telegraphy, carrier pigeon and electronic bus. A message can be the content of a broadcast. An interactive exchange of messages forms a conversation.

Quotes

• The messenger gave heed to the words of his king. He journeyed by the starry night, and by day he travelled with Utu of heaven. Where and to whom will he carry the important message of Inana with its stinging tone? ... He stepped joyfully into the courtyard of Aratta, he made known the authority of his king. Openly he spoke out the words in his heart. The messenger transmitted the message to the lord of Aratta.
  • Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, Neo-Sumerian period (ca. 21st century BCE).

• His speech was substantial, and its contents extensive. The messenger, whose mouth was heavy, was not able to repeat it. Because the messenger, whose mouth was tired, was not able to repeat it, the lord of Kulaba patted some clay and wrote the message as if on a tablet. Formerly, the writing of messages on clay was not established. Now, under that sun and on that day, it was indeed so. The lord of Kulaba inscribed the message like a tablet. It was just like that.
  • Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, Neo-Sumerian period (ca. 21st century BCE).

• My life is my message.
  • Mahatma Gandhi, response to a journalist's question about what his message to the world was. Mahatma: Life of Gandhi 1869-1948 (1968) Reel 13

• My songs has been my messages that I tried to scatter across the back sides and along the steps of the fire escapes and on the window sills and through the dark halls.
  • Woody Guthrie, Bound For Glory (1943). QUoted in Kinney, David (2014). The Dylanologists: Adventures in the Land of Bob. Simon and Schuster. p. 40. ISBN 978-1-4516-2693-3. 

• Out of the world comes a behest to instill into the air a rapturous song for God, to incarnate in the stones a message of humble beauty.
  • Abraham Joshua Heschel, Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (1997), The Holy Dimension, p. 330.

• Man is a messenger who forgot the message.
  • Abraham Joshua Heschel, as quoted in The Zookeeper's Wife : A War Story (2008) by Diane Ackerman.

• The medium is the message.
  • Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media (1964)

• The "message" of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs
  • Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media (1964), p. 8.

• The message of radio is one of violent, unified implosion and resonance.
  • Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media (1964), p. 263.

• The user of the electric light -- or a hammer, or a language, or a book -- is the content. As such, there is a total metamorphosis of the user by the interface. It is the metamorphosis that I consider the message.
  • Marshall McLuhan in a letter to Edward T. Hall, 1971, Letters of Marshall McLuhan, p. 397

• Be my witness, O God, that I conveyed your message to your people.
  • Muhammad, Farewell Sermon

• A message is given to many, but those who are meant to understand, understand.
  • Rwandan proverb, as quoted in "Killer Songs" (17 March 2002), by Donald G. McNeil, Jr., The New York Times

See also

• Messenger
• Communication
• Mail
• Radio
• Semiotics
• Television
• Shipping

External links

• Encyclopedic article on Message on Wikipedia
• Media related to Messages on Wikimedia Commons
• The dictionary definition of message on Wiktionary