Omnipotence Quotes

“It sounds like a fairy-tale, but not only that; this story of what man by his science and practical inventions has achieved on this earth, where he first appeared as a weakly member of the animal kingdom, and on which each individual of his species must ever again appear as a helpless infant... is a direct fulfilment of all, or of most, of the dearest wishes in his fairy-tales. All these possessions he has acquired through culture. Long ago he formed an ideal conception of omnipotence and omniscience which he embodied in his gods. Whatever seemed unattainable to his desires - or forbidden to him - he attributed to these gods. One may say, therefore, that these gods were the ideals of his culture. Now he has himself approached very near to realizing this ideal, he has nearly become a god himself. But only, it is true, in the way that ideals are usually realized in the general experience of humanity. Not completely; in some respects not at all, in others only by halves. Man has become a god by means of artificial limbs, so to speak, quite magnificent when equipped with all his accessory organs; but they do not grow on him and they still give him trouble at times... Future ages will produce further great advances in this realm of culture, probably inconceivable now, and will increase man's likeness to a god still more.”
― Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents

“I dared, for the first and last time in my life, to express a theological conclusion: "But how can a necessary being exist totally polluted with the possible? What difference is there, then, between God and primogenial chaos? Isn't affirming God's absolute omnipotence and His absolute freedom with regard to His own choices tantamount to demonstrating that God does not exist?”
― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

“Omnipotent-benevolent simply means that God is all-powerful and well-meaning.'
'I understand the concept. It's just . . . there seems to be a contradiction.'
'Yes. The contradiction is pain. Man's starvation, war, sickness . . .'
'Exactly!' Chartrand knew the camerlengo would understand. 'Terrible things happen in this world. Human tragedy seems like proof that God could not possibly be both all-powerful and well-meaning. If He loves us and has the power to change our situation, He would prevent our pain, wouldn't He?'
The camerlengo frowned. 'Would He?'
Chartrand felt uneasy. Had he overstepped his bounds? Was this one of those religious questions you just didn't ask? 'Well . . . if God loves us, and He can protect us, He would have to. It seems He is either omnipotent and uncaring, or benevolent and powerless to help.'
'Do you have children, Lieutenant?'
Chartrand flushed. 'No, signore.'
'Imagine you had an eight-year-old son . . . would you love him?'
'Of course.'
'Would you let him skateboard?'
Chartrand did a double take. The camerlengo always seemed oddly "in touch" for a clergyman. 'Yeah, I guess,' Chartrand said. 'Sure, I'd let him skateboard, but I'd tell him to be careful.'
'So as this child's father, you would give him some basic, good advice and then let him go off and make his own mistakes?'
'I wouldn't run behind him and mollycoddle him if that's what you mean.'
'But what if he fell and skinned his knee?'
'He would learn to be more careful.'
The camerlengo smiled. 'So although you have the power to interfere and prevent your child's pain, you would choose to show your love by letting him learn his own lessons?'
'Of course. Pain is part of growing up. It's how we learn.'
The camerlengo nodded. 'Exactly.”
― Dan Brown, Angels & Demons

“If I were omnipotent and omnibenevolent I wouldn't be so damn ineffable.”
― Jo Walton, Among Others

“What's simple is that everything good comes from God, and everything bad comes from man. Where it gets complicated is that everything seemingly good but ultimately bad comes from man, and everything seemingly bad but ultimately good comes from God.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“If that were God's plan, it's a bad bargain; I don't want to have to deal with a God like that...My sense is God and I came to an accommodation with each other a couple of decades ago, where he's gotten used to the things that I'm not capable of and I've come to terms with things he's not capable of...and we care very much about each other.”
― Harold Kushner

“Statistics, likelihoods, and probabilities mean everything to men, nothing to God.”
― Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway: Quotes, Verse, and Grumblings for Every Day of the Year

“A child's cry touches a father's heart, and our King is the Father of his people. If we can do no more than cry it will bring omnipotence to our aid. A cry is the native language of a spiritually needy soul; it has done with fine phrases and long orations, and it takes to sobs and moans; and so, indeed, it grasps the most potent of all weapons, for heaven always yields to such artillery.”
― Charles H. Spurgeon, The Treasury of David: Spurgeon's Classic Work on the Psalms

“I didn’t realize that in his wish to transform me was the proof that he didn’t like me as I was, he wanted me to be different, or, rather, he didn’t want just a woman, he wanted the woman he imagined he himself would be if he were a woman. For Franco, I said, I was an opportunity for him to expand into the feminine, to take possession of it: I constituted the proof of his omnipotence, the demonstration that he knew now to be not only a man in the right way, but also a woman.”
― Elena Ferrante, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay

“It comes as no surprise to find [Norman] Mailer embracing [in the book On God] a form of Manicheanism, pitting the forces of light and darkness against each other in a permanent stand-off, with humanity as the battlefield. (When asked if Jesus is part of this battle, he responds rather loftily that he thinks it is a distinct possibility.) But it is at points like this that he talks as if all the late-night undergraduate talk sessions on the question of theism had become rolled into one. 'How can we not face up to the fact that if God is All-Powerful, He cannot be All-Good. Or She cannot be All-Good.'

Mailer says that questions such as this have bedevilled 'theologians', whereas it would be more accurate to say that such questions, posed by philosophers, have attempted to put theologians out of business. A long exchange on the probability of reincarnation (known to Mailer sometimes as “karmic reassignment”) manages to fall slightly below the level of those undergraduate talk sessions. The Manichean stand-off leads Mailer, in closing, to speculate on what God might desire politically and to say: 'In different times, the heavens may have been partial to monarchy, to communism, and certainly the Lord was interested in democracy, in capitalism. (As was the Devil!)'

I think it was at this point that I decided I would rather remember Mailer as the author of Harlot's Ghost and The Armies of the Night.”
― Christopher Hitchens

“...The sublime feeling is not mere pleasure as taste is – it is a mixture of pleasure and pain... Confronted with objects that are too big according to their magnitude or too
violent according to their power, the mind experiences its own limitations.”
― Jean-François Lyotard, Peregrinations: Law, Form, Event (Wellek Library Lectures

“Omnipotence and omniscience are the end of power and knowledge.”
― Dejan Stojanovic

“Did I Not Say To You

Did I not say to you, “Go not there, for I am your friend; in this
mirage of annihilation I am the fountain of life?”
Even though in anger you depart a hundred thousand years
from me, in the end you will come to me, for I am your goal.
Did I not say to you, “Be not content with worldly forms, for I
am the fashioner of the tabernacle of your contentment?”
Did I not say to you, “I am the sea and you are a single fish;
go not to dry land, for I am your crystal sea?”
Did I not say to you, “ Go not like birds to the snare; come, for
I am the power of flight and your wings and feet?”
Did I not say to you, “ They will waylay you and make you
cold, for I am the fire and warmth and heat of your desire?”
Did I not say to you, “ They will implant in you ugly qualities
so that you will forget that I am the source of purity to you?”
Did I not say to you, “Do not say from what direction the ser-
vant’s affairs come into order?” I am the Creator without
directions.
If you are the lamp of the heart, know where the road is to the
house; and if you are godlike of attribute, know that I am your
Maser.”
― Jalaluddin Rumi

“Dismally enough, some of us are insecure in such a way that we cannot bear the thought of the sovereignty of God, the thought of His Being as greater than ourselves; it moves us into feelings of insignificance. Nonetheless, allow me to personally and peacefully maintain that if I were to worship and obey anything, I would like it far greater than myself or any person or human system, preferably to a point where it, in all its majesty, makes me feel lost and even 'creatural' in my basic humanity. Only this God - He who is great beyond human measure, yet still considers His creation precious - I find to be more than worthy of praise; otherwise, I bow down and worship nothing. And if the thought of such a superior and almighty God were to indeed offend me, I would have to remember that it is because I am only as significant as the things which I am idolizing, things which are ultimately separating me, the creation, from my ultimate Creator.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“Omnipotence is a status that is fragile at best. By its very own standard meaning of unlimited power, unlimited authority, unlimited presence, and unlimited meaning; it still follows within its own realm of self-defeat, being overwhelmingly defeated, unlimited defeat, being crippled, being negated, being surpassed, being unable to do, and etc. And of course, one can twist metalogic, add in paradoxes, add in metapotence, but it's usually as a means to maintain the belief of something so high, that it cannot be reached. Unfortunately, it's been reached, and it has been defeated by finite conditions.”
― Lionel Suggs

“It never ceased to amaze me, until suddenly one day I felt beautiful and holy for having had the courage to hold on to my sanity after all I'd seen and been through, body and soul, in too loud a solitude, and slowly I came to the realization that my work was hurtling me headlong into an infinite field of omnipotence.”
― Bohumil Hrabal, Too Loud a Solitude

“God in His omnipotence says, ‘Here it is.’ And we in our ignorance say, ‘No it’s not!’ And in the end there it was, and where it is we are not.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Can God be so powerful as to surrender all power? And the answer was yes!”
― Vitor Westhelle

“Children understood at a very young age that doing nothing was an expression of power. Doing nothing was a choice swollen with omnipotence. It was, in fact, godly.

And this, she now realized, was the reason why the gods did nothing. Proof of their omniscience. After all, to act was to announce awful limitations, for it revealed that chance acted first, the accidents were just that—events beyond the will of the gods—and all they could do in answer was to attempt to remedy the consequences, to alter natural ends. To act, then, was an admission of fallibility”
― Steven Erikson, Dust of Dreams

“THE ALMOST-INCORPOREAL VASTNESS PUZZLES, LISTENING AS LEVIATHAN MIGHT PUZZLE OVER THE PROBLEMS OF AN ATOM.”
― James Tiptree Jr., Up the Walls of the World

“Neoclassical theology corrects misconceptions about God that are neither experientially true nor biblically grounded. If God were "omnipotent" in the sense of absolute determinism, then creation, and especially humans, would have no freedom. Freedom and absolute determinism negate one another. From the perspective of process metaphysics, if God were fully deterministic, then one could not speak of freedom of the will, the ability to choose to participate in God's creativity or not. God is in control, but God is not a control freak! God is not a "tyrant," puppeter, or robotic engineer!”
― Karen Baker-Fletcher, Dancing with God: The Trinity from a Womanist Perspective

“To understand even remotely the holy omnipotence of God is to understand at least from mostly to wholly the magnificence of Christ.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“I believe you will discover the horizons of my imaginings far wider than you would suspect, Lord Chaos. You address omnipotence. Tread carefully.”
― Jim Starlin, The Infinity Gauntlet Omnibus

“If God is omniscient, this doesn't necessarily mean that he is omnipotent, too. Omniscience is associated with future events that cannot be changed. In similar way, it is impossible to change the causal chain leading up to the emergence of these future events, while omnipotence is related to the power to change and re-arrange this causal chain itself. Now the question is whether God can have it in his power to make such a change and re-arrangement? If yes, then God would contradict himself: how can God foreknow something that will not happen because of an alteration of the causal chain leading to its occurrence at a later time? If not, God would contradict himself, too: how can God be Almighty if he cannot alter what he believed to happen at a earlier time?”
― Elmar Hussein

“There are only two consistent visions of ultimate reality: one stating that the source of all being is an act of omnipotent will, and one stating that the source of all being is a jolt of mindless absurdity. The main difference between the two is that the former is preposterously unfathomable, while the latter is unfathomably preposterous.”
― Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

“In our third-dimensional world on Earth alone you have a rough estimate of around seven billion humans, however half of that population are just illusion that are created, [1] and the other half is a part of each of the Twelve Omnipotent beings.” [2]”
― Gino DiCaprio, Time is an Illusion: Book II - Edited Edition

“The trees are only trees, sea levels are only sea levels. God made them and walked away and now they simply do what they do…”
― A.D. Aliwat, In Limbo

“We want the mind of God; we seek the heart of Christ - and even pray it, then receive them to a degree. But people are unable to bear these fully: for He is both stronger and more sensitive than we.”
― Criss Jami

“It is said that God the Creator is all-knowing. But if that were true, He would have known better.”
― George Hammond

“Omniscience can’t coexist with omnipotence — because an omniscient mind is by definition incapable of making itself not know something.”
― George Hammond