“The self as master is born in the realization that nature can be commanded. Real mastery requires a means. The self develops technique—the idea of work put into the hands of another agency held in bondage to the self.”

Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World (1995)

1961, Address at the University of Washington

Source: 1940's, A New Realism', 1943-1945, p. 17

Source: The Strength To Dream (1961), p. 197
Context: No artist can develop without increasing his self-knowledge; but self-knowledge supposes a certain preoccupation with the meaning of human life and the destiny of man. A definite set of beliefs — Methodist Christianity, for example — may only be a hindrance to development; but it is not more so than Beckett's refusal to think at all. Shaw says somewhere that all intelligent men must be preoccupied with either religion, politics, or sex. (He seems to attribute T. E. Lawrence's tragedy to his refusal to come to grips with any of them.) It is hard to see how an artist could hope to achieve any degree of self-knowledge without being deeply concerned with at least one of the three.

Source: Making Movies

Preface p. vii
The Meaning of a Liberal Education (1926)

As quoted in "V.S. Naipaul in Search of Himself: A Conversation" with Mel Gussow, The New York Times, (24 April 1994) http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/06/07/specials/naipaul-conversation.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Meher Baba Journal (June 1941), p. 480.
General sources