The Twilight of the Idols · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
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Science is the _first,_ the germ of all sins, the original sin. _This alone is morality._—“Thou shalt _not_ know”:—the rest follows as a matter of course, God’s panic did not deprive him of his intelligence. How can one _guard_ against science? For ages this was his principal problem. Reply: man must be kicked out of paradise! Happiness, leisure leads to thinking,—all thoughts are bad thoughts.... Man _must_ not think.—And the “priest-per-se” proceeds to invent distress, death, the vital danger of pregnancy, every kind of misery, decrepitude, and affliction, and above all _disease,_—all these are but weapons employed in the struggle with science! Trouble prevents man from thinking.... And notwithstanding all these precautions! Oh, horror! the work of science towers aloft, it storms heaven itself, it rings the death-knell of the gods,—what’s to be done?—The old God invents _war;_ he separates the nations, and contrives to make men destroy each other mutually (—the priests have always been in need of war....) War, among other things, is a great disturber of science!—Incredible! Knowledge, _the rejection of the sacerdotal yoke,_ nevertheless increases.—So the old God arrives at this final decision: “Man has become scientific,—_there is no help for it, he must be drowned!_” ...
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.