Reassertion Quotes

After a democratic interlude the "monarchy" returns with a vengeance, returns by the back door, camouflaged, masked and diabolically perverted - a blood-curdling metamorphosis we know only from nightmares or surrealist films. The reassertion of the natural father-urge does not result in the restitution of the paternal kingdom but in the rise of the Terrifying Father, a Krónos devouring his own children, who are paralyzed by his magnetic glare like rabbits facing a boa constrictor. ~ Erik Von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

In Russia's case he identifies three strands: the Atlanticists, favouring alignment with the United States and the West (the bandwagoners); the imperialists, who favour the reassertion of Russia's power in opposition to the West (the balancers); and the neo-Slavophiles, sharing the sentiments of the imperialists but who stress the development of the country's Slavic identity.8 According to Zimmerman, the fundamental divide is indeed between Westernisers and Slavophiles, in a reprise of nineteenth-century debates, with the Slavophiles intent on counterbalancing American hegemony and finding an autonomous developmental path.9 ~ Richard Sakwa

It is the incongruous thing in my entire life, this isolation ... My work requires it - but I myself have no need or use for it - Perhaps once on a time I found isolation imperative - I think all chrysalides do - all embryos go for the underside of the leaf in the time of body-change preparing for the final reassertion -resurrection - the establishment of the entity. But now I've come up tot the outside of my casements. ~ Marsden Hartley

The putting to death of morality had, on the whole, become a sort of ritual sacrifice necessary for the reassertion of the dominant values of the group - centered for some decades now on competition, innovation, and energy, more than on fidelity and duty. ~ Michel Houellebecq

We talked, and I ate, and for the first time, Katy's death moved to the back of my consciousness, if only for a moment. This is bereavement: the slow, eventual reassertion of your own meaningless preoccupations. As ~ Drew Magary

In moments of spiritual crisis we naturally fall back upon what worked for us, or seemed to work, heretofore. Sometimes this shows up through the reassertion of our old values in belligerent, testy ways. Regression of any kind is just such a return to old presumptions, often after they have been shown to be insufficient for the complexity of larger questions. The virtue of the old presumptions is that they once worked, or seemed to work, and therein lies if not certainty, then nostalgia for a previous, presumptive security. In our private lives, we frequently fall back upon our old roles. ~ James Hollis