Humanity must awaken to wonder. Science is a way of sending us to sleep again.

This is a paraphrased rendition of a Ludwig Wittgenstein quote. Below is the full context of the quote:

“On the contrary there is absolutely no reason to wonder at these things, because they are such everyday occurrences. If primitive men can’t help but wonder at them, how much more so dogs and monkeys. Or is it being assumed that men, as it were, suddenly woke up and, noticing for the first time these things that had always been there, were understandably amazed? — Well, as a matter of fact we might assume something like this; though not that they become aware of these things for the first time but that they do suddenly start to wonder at them. But this again has nothing to do with their being primitive. Unless it is called primitive not to wonder at things, in which case the people of today are really the primitive ones, and [Ernest] Renan himself too if he supposes that scientific explanation could intensify wonderment.

As though lightning were more commonplace or less astounding today than 2000 years ago.

Man has to awaken to wonder – and so perhaps do peoples. Science is a way of sending him to sleep again.

In other words it’s just false to say: Of course, these primitive peoples couldn’t help wondering at everything. Though perhaps it is true that these peoples did wonder at all the things around them. — To suppose they couldn’t help wondering at them is a primitive superstition. (It is like supposing that they had to be afraid of all the forces of nature, whereas we of course have no need to be afraid. On the other hand we may learn from experience that certain primitive tribes are very strongly inclined to fear natural phenomena. — But we cannot exclude the possibility that highly civilized peoples will become liable to this very same fear once again; neither their civilization nor scientific knowledge can protect them against this. All the same it’s true enough that the spirit in which science is carried on nowadays is not compatible with fear of this kind.)”

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p.5e