Sentence examples for impotent to do from inspiring English sources

But it was enraging to be in that situation, and to be completely impotent to do anything to help.

The law is impotent to do anything about the liquor stores, so Rudy, out of anger and frustration, decides to take matters into his own hands.

To falsely constrain anything to historically larger canons is to render technology impotent to do what it does best.

Of course, if they've got nothing on you, then the whips can be curiously powerless: Labour's notorious rebel Bob Marguedl-Andrews argued that they were impotent to do anything to stop him spending his parliamentary career mouthing off about what a shitbag Tony Blair was, because he had no ambition for promotion, no skeletons in his closet and he wasn't easily intimidated.

This can be experienced as a 'technological imperative', or more generally, as a 'capability imperative': as soon as some newfound mode of intervention is made available, one's sphere of possible agency is expanded, and one inescapably finds oneself at liberty to influence states of affairs where one used to be factually impotent to do so.

Small-town businessman Al Roosten is humiliated at a charity event, takes petty revenge for a perceived slight and entertains delusions of political grandeur, yet when it comes to real action he's impotent, unable to do more than exchange a "weak smile" with a passing vagrant.

He knows that the courtiers have taken Gilda but is impotent to act.

They held 52 Americans hostage, and we were pathetically impotent in our efforts to do anything about it.

In the face of so many unwilling politicians and impotent systems I had to do something - even if that was as simple as showing up.

Bahuchara is believed to continue to identify impotent men and command them to do the same.

But this play, with all its prejudices, forces me to do so, with Jake becoming impotent because of his concerns for caring for Joey.