All 25 Uses of
assert
in
Atlas Shrugged
- Knowing that he had to assert his authority, smothering the shameful realization of the sort of substitute he was choosing, Dr. Stadler said imperiously, in a tone of sarcastic rudeness, "The next time I call for you, you'd better do something about that car of yours.†
Chpt 2.1
- He spoke in flat assertions.†
Chpt 2.1 *
- You have no moral superiority to assert or to defend.†
Chpt 2.4
- She did not know for how long the broken snatches of their struggle kept rolling past her-the sounds that nudged and prodded one another, trying to edge back and leave someone pushed forward-a struggle, not to assert one's own will, but to squeeze an assertion from some unwilling victim —a battle in which the decision was to be pronounced, not by the winner, but by the loser: "It seems to me ….†
Chpt 2.5
- She did not know for how long the broken snatches of their struggle kept rolling past her-the sounds that nudged and prodded one another, trying to edge back and leave someone pushed forward-a struggle, not to assert one's own will, but to squeeze an assertion from some unwilling victim —a battle in which the decision was to be pronounced, not by the winner, but by the loser: "It seems to me ….†
Chpt 2.5
- You've got to get there, Kip," said the man ominously, in that stubborn monotone of the unthinking which asserts an end without concern for the means.†
Chpt 2.7
- She talked economics, instead of glamor, for press interviews, in the belligerently righteous style of a third-rate tabloid; her economics consisted of the assertion that "we've got to help the poor.†
Chpt 2.7
- The woman in Roomette 10, Car No. 3, was an elderly schoolteacher who had spent her life turning class after class of helpless children into miserable cowards, by teaching them that the will of the majority is the only standard of good and evil, that a majority may do anything it pleases, that they must not assert their own personalities, but must do as others were doing.†
Chpt 2.7
- She knew also that this was his rebellion against the world around them, against its worship of degradation, against the long torment of his wasted days and lightless struggle-this was what he wished to assert and, alone with her in the half-darkness high in space above a city of ruins, to hold as the last of his property.†
Chpt 2.9
- "We never make assertions, Miss Taggart," said Hugh Akston.†
Chpt 3.1
- People would not employ a plumber who'd attempt to prove his professional excellence by asserting that there's no such thing as plumbing-but, apparently, the same standards of caution are not considered necessary in regard to philosophers.†
Chpt 3.1
- Now I saw that one man was to be bound by it, but the other was not, one was to obey a rule, the other was to assert an arbitrary wish-his need-and the law was to stand on the side of the wish.†
Chpt 3.1
- I have often wondered at the smugness with which people assert their right to enslave me, to control my work, to force my will, to violate my conscience, to stifle my mind-yet what is it that they expect to depend on, when they lie on an operating table under my hands?†
Chpt 3.1
- …is the recognition of the fact that yours is the responsibility of judgment and nothing can help you escape it-that no substitute can do your thinking, as no pinch-hitter can live your lifethat the vilest form of self-abasement and self-destruction is the subordination of your mind to the mind of another, the acceptance of an authority over your brain, the acceptance of his assertions as facts, his say-so as truth, his edicts as middle-man between your consciousness and your existence.†
Chpt 3.7
- The mystics of muscle do not bother to assert any claim to extrasensory perception: they merely declare that your senses are not valid, and that their wisdom consists of perceiving your blindness by some manner of unspecified means.†
Chpt 3.7
- They offer you, as proof of their superior knowledge, the fact that they assert the opposite of everything you know, and as proof of their superior ability to deal with existence, the fact that they lead you to misery, self-sacrifice, starvation, destruction.†
Chpt 3.7
- As revolt against unproved assertions, they proclaim that nothing can be proved; as revolt against supernatural knowledge, they proclaim that no knowledge is possible; as revolt against the enemies of science, they proclaim that science is superstition; as revolt against the enslavement of the mind, they proclaim that there is no mind.†
Chpt 3.7
- When you listen to a mystic's harangue on the impotence of the human mind and begin to doubt your consciousness, not his, when you permit your precariously semi-rational state to be shaken by any assertion and decide it is safer to trust his superior certainty and knowledge, the joke is on both of you: your sanction is the only source of certainty he has.†
Chpt 3.7
- Somewhere in. the distant reaches of his childhood, when his own understanding of reality clashed with the assertions of others, with their arbitrary orders and contradictory demands, he gave in to so craven a fear of dependence that he renounced his rational faculty.†
Chpt 3.7
- He wants them to surrender their consciousness to his assertions, his edicts, his wishes, his whims-as his consciousness is surrendered to theirs.†
Chpt 3.7
- I heard three parasites assert that my brain and my life were their property, that my right to exist was conditional and depended on the satisfaction of their desires.†
Chpt 3.7
- You proclaim that you need us, yet indulge the impertinence of asserting your right to rule us by force-and expect that we, who are not afraid of that physical nature which fills you with terror, will cower at the sight of any lout who has talked you into voting him a chance to command us.†
Chpt 3.7
- …they practice it the only way it can be practiced: by turning the earth into a sacrificial furnace-that your morality forbids you to oppose them in the only way they can be opposed: by refusing to become a sacrificial animal and proudly asserting your right to exist-that in order to fight them to the finish and with full rectitude, it is your morality that you have to reject, "You blank it out, because your self-esteem is tied to that mystic 'unselfishness' which you've never possessed…†
Chpt 3.7
- …was the responsibility you dreaded, it required the kind of rational discipline you did not value yourself enough to assume-and the anxious staleness of your days is the monument to your evasion of the knowledge that there is no moral substitute for happiness, that there is no more despicable coward than, the man who deserted the battle for his joy, fearing to assert his right to existence, lacking the courage and the loyalty to life of a bird or a flower reaching for the sun.†
Chpt 3.7
- She felt with sudden certainty that they feared the precision of his face, the unyielding clarity of his features, the look of being an entity, a look of asserting existence.†
Chpt 3.8
Definition:
-
(assert as in: asserted her opinion that...) to say that something is true -- especially something disputed