Watch out for the parentheses. As has been pointed out in other answers, in Python 3, assert is still a statement, so by analogy with print(..), one may extrapolate the same to assert(..) or raise(..) but you shouldn't.

This is wrong:

assert(2 + 2 == 5, "Houston we've got a problem")

This is correct:

assert 2 + 2 == 5, "Houston we've got a problem"

The reason the first one will not work is that bool( (False, "Houston we've got a problem") ) evaluates to True.

In the statement assert(False), these are just redundant parentheses around False, which evaluate to their contents. But with assert(False,) the parentheses are now a tuple, and a non-empty tuple evaluates to True in a boolean context.

As other answers have noted, assert is similar to throwing an exception if a given condition isn't true. An important difference is that assert statements get ignored if you compile your code with the optimization option -O. The documentation says that assert expression can better be described as being equivalent to

if __debug__:
   if not expression: raise AssertionError

This can be useful if you want to thoroughly test your code, then release an optimized version when you're happy that none of your assertion cases fail - when optimization is on, the __debug__ variable becomes False and the conditions will stop getting evaluated. This feature can also catch you out if you're relying on the asserts and don't realize they've disappeared.

The goal of an assertion in Python is to inform developers about unrecoverable errors in a program.

Assertions are not intended to signal expected error conditions, like “file not found”, where a user can take corrective action (or just try again).

Another way to look at it is to say that assertions are internal self-checks in your code. They work by declaring some conditions as impossible in your code. If these conditions don’t hold that means there’s a bug in the program.

If your program is bug-free, these conditions will never occur. But if one of them does occur the program will crash with an assertion error telling you exactly which “impossible” condition was triggered. This makes it much easier to track down and fix bugs in your programs.

Here’s a summary from a tutorial on Python’s assertions I wrote:

Python’s assert statement is a debugging aid, not a mechanism for handling run-time errors. The goal of using assertions is to let developers find the likely root cause of a bug more quickly. An assertion error should never be raised unless there’s a bug in your program.

Others have already given you links to documentation.

You can try the following in a interactive shell:

>>> assert 5 > 2
>>> assert 2 > 5
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 1, in <fragment>
builtins.AssertionError:

The first statement does nothing, while the second raises an exception. This is the first hint: asserts are useful to check conditions that should be true in a given position of your code (usually, the beginning (preconditions) and the end of a function (postconditions)).

Asserts are actually highly tied to programming by contract, which is a very useful engineering practice:

.

From docs:

Assert statements are a convenient way to insert debugging assertions into a program

You can read more here:

The assert statement has two forms.

The simple form, assert <expression>, is equivalent to

if __​debug__:
    if not <expression>: raise AssertionError

The extended form, assert <expression1>, <expression2>, is equivalent to

if __​debug__:
    if not <expression1>: raise AssertionError(<expression2>)

Assertions are a systematic way to check that the internal state of a program is as the programmer expected, with the goal of catching bugs. See the example below.

>>> number = input('Enter a positive number:')
Enter a positive number:-1
>>> assert (number > 0), 'Only positive numbers are allowed!'
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
AssertionError: Only positive numbers are allowed!
>>> 

Here is a simple example, save this in file (let's say b.py)

def chkassert(num):
    assert type(num) == int


chkassert('a')

and the result when $python b.py

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "b.py", line 5, in <module>
    chkassert('a')
  File "b.py", line 2, in chkassert
    assert type(num) == int
AssertionError

As summarized concisely on the C2 Wiki:

An assertion is a boolean expression at a specific point in a program which will be true unless there is a bug in the program.

You can use an assert statement to document your understanding of the code at a particular program point. For example, you can document assumptions or guarantees about inputs (preconditions), program state (invariants), or outputs (postconditions).

Should your assertion ever fail, this is an alert for you (or your successor) that your understanding of the program was wrong when you wrote it, and that it likely contains a bug.

For more information, John Regehr has a wonderful blog post on the Use of Assertions, which applies to the Python assert statement as well.

The assert statement exists in almost every programming language. It helps detect problems early in your program, where the cause is clear, rather than later as a side-effect of some other operation. They always expect a True condition.

When you do something like:

assert condition

You're telling the program to test that condition and immediately trigger an error if it is false.

In Python, assert expression, is equivalent to:

if __debug__:
    if not <expression>: raise AssertionError

You can use the extended expression to pass an optional message:

if __debug__:
    if not (expression_1): raise AssertionError(expression_2)

Try it in the Python interpreter:

>>> assert True # Nothing happens because the condition returns a True value.
>>> assert False # A traceback is triggered because this evaluation did not yield an expected value.
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
AssertionError

There are some caveats to seen before using them mainly for those who deem to toggles between the assert and if statements. The aim to use assert is on occasions when the program verifies a condition and return a value that should stop the program immediately instead of taking some alternative way to bypass the error:

1. Parentheses

As you may have noticed, the assert statement uses two conditions. Hence, do not use parentheses to englobe them as one for obvious advice. If you do such as:

assert (condition, message)

Example:

>>> assert (1==2, 1==1)
<stdin>:1: SyntaxWarning: assertion is always true, perhaps remove parentheses?

You will be running the assert with a (condition, message) which represents a tuple as the first parameter, and this happens cause non-empty tuple in Python is always True. However, you can do separately without problem:

assert (condition), "message"

Example:

>>> assert (1==2), ("This condition returns a %s value.") % "False"
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
AssertionError: This condition returns a False value.