powerless quotes

Wandering between two worlds, one dead, The other powerless to be born, With nowhere yet to rest my head, Like these, on earth I wait forlorn.

- Matthew Arnold
  Poems: Second Series,'Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse', l.85^8.

We of the FBI are powerless to act in cases of oral^ genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate commerce.

-J(ohn) Edgar Hoover
Quoted in the NewYork Times, 6 Oct1980.

Around me, around them [the dissidents], the total, all- eclipsing Soviet world, which renders any other world powerless and far away, had become profoundly, morally hostile.

- Colin Gerald Dryden Thubron
  Among the Russians (published in the US asWhere the Nights are Longest).