“He was assaulting the world by assaulting himself.”

All Gall Is Divided (1952)

Quotes, The Assault on Reason (2007)
Context: For the first time in American history, the Executive Branch of our government has not only condoned but actively promoted the treatment of captives in wartime that clearly involves torture, thus overturning a prohibition established by General George Washington during the Revolutionary War.
It is too easy — and too partisan — to simply place the blame on the policies of President George W. Bush. We are all responsible for the decisions our country makes. We have a Congress. We have an independent judiciary. We have checks and balances. We are a nation of laws. We have free speech. We have a free press. Have they all failed us? Why has America's public discourse become less focused and clear, less reasoned? Faith in the power of reason — the belief that free citizens can govern themselves wisely and fairly by resorting to logical debate on the basis of the best evidence available, instead of raw power — remains the central premise of American democracy. This premise is now under assault.

The First Part, Chapter 14, p. 66
Leviathan (1651)

Jennings v. Rundall (1799), 8 T.R. 337.

"The Chronicle of Young Satan" (ca. 1897–1900, unfinished), published posthumously in Mark Twain's Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts (1969), ed. William Merriam Gibson ( pp. 165–166 http://books.google.com/books?id=LDvA2xcYZKcC&pg=PA165 in the 2005 paperback printing, ).
Source: The Mysterious Stranger and Other Curious Tales
Context: Your race, in its poverty, has unquestionably one really effective weapon—laughter. Power, Money, Persuasion, Supplication, Persecution—these can lift at a colossal humbug,—push it a little—crowd it a little—weaken it a little, century by century: but only Laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of Laughter nothing can stand.

Second Week, First Day, Part iii.
La Seconde Semaine (1584)

Source: Guerrilla Warfare (1961), Ch. III: 2. Civil Organization

At the introduction of the Assault Weapons Ban of 2013 ([Feinstein floats assault weapons ban, Ginger, Gibson, January 24, 2013, September 6, 2018, Politico, https://www.politico.com/story/2013/01/dianne-feinstein-assault-weapons-ban-086684]).

National self-sufficiency http://www.panarchy.org/keynes/national.1933.html, New Statesman and Nation (15 July 1933)
Variant: Words ought to be a little wild for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking.