Definition of Collapse

Collapse

To fall together suddenly, as the sides of a hollow vessel; to close by falling or shrinking together; to have the sides or parts of (a thing) fall in together, or be crushed in together; as, a flue in the boiler of a steam engine sometimes collapses.

To fail suddenly and completely, like something hollow when subject to too much pressure; to undergo a collapse; as, Maximilian's government collapsed soon after the French army left Mexico; many financial projects collapse after attaining some success and importance.

A falling together suddenly, as of the sides of a hollow vessel.

A sudden and complete failure; an utter failure of any kind; a breakdown.

Extreme depression or sudden failing of all the vital powers, as the result of disease, injury, or nervous disturbance.

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Collapse Quotations

When a place gets crowded enough to require ID's, social collapse is not far away. It is time to go elsewhere. The best thing about space travel is that it made it possible to go elsewhere.
Robert A. Heinlein

America cannot continue to lead the family of nations around the world if we suffer the collapse of the family here at home.
Mitt Romney

I could feel his muscle tissues collapse under my force. It's ludicrous these mortals even attempt to enter my realm.
Mike Tyson

If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.
E. O. Wilson

Some people are contriving ways and means of making us collapse.
Robert Mugabe

The New Deal is plainly an attempt to achieve a working socialism and avert a social collapse in America; it is extraordinarily parallel to the successive 'policies' and 'Plans' of the Russian experiment. Americans shirk the word 'socialism', but what else can one call it?
H. G. Wells

Exercise? I get it on the golf course. When I see my friends collapse, I run for the paramedics.
Red Skelton

We may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrial civilization to collapse.
Maurice Strong

A matter that seems to be very clear in terms of the alternative view, is what do you expect to happen in Africa with regard to immune systems, where people are poor, subject to repeat infections and all of that. Surely you would expect their immune systems to collapse.
Thabo Mbeki

You know, we all have our inner demons. I, for one - I can't speak for you, but I'm on the verge of moral collapse at any time. It can happen by the end of the show.
Glenn Beck

Perfection of planned layout is achieved only by institutions on the point of collapse.
C. Northcote Parkinson

Your home is regarded as a model home, your life as a model life. But all this splendor, and you along with it... it's just as though it were built upon a shifting quagmire. A moment may come, a word can be spoken, and both you and all this splendor will collapse.
Henrik Ibsen

Particularly at around the age of 70 you reach a stage where you have to be very careful. If, at that point, you abandon the work you have been doing, there is a good chance that you will just collapse and drift.
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

A couple of flop plays, a death in the family, and it could all collapse.
Patrick Marber

The left dismisses talk about the collapse of family life and talks instead about the emergence of the growing new diversity of family types.
Christopher Lasch

The last three decades have seen the collapse of the family wage system.
Christopher Lasch

Without energy life would be extinguished instantaneously, and the cellular fabric would collapse.
Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

An American of the present day reading his Sunday newspaper in a state of lazy collapse is one of the most perfect symbols of the triumph of quantity over quality that the world has yet seen.
Irving Babbitt

If your theory is found to be against the second law of theromodynamics, I give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.
Arthur Eddington

After two world wars, the collapse of fascism, nazism, communism and colonialism and the end of the cold war, humanity has entered a new phase of its history.
Hans Kung

I think money is due for some sort of collapse. People are going to realize that money has a half-life, like radioactive elements.
Doug Coupland

Every wave, regardless of how high and forceful it crests, must eventually collapse within itself.
Stefan Zweig

Men were only made into "men" with great difficulty even in primitive society: the male is not naturally "a man" any more than the woman. He has to be propped up into that position with some ingenuity, and is always likely to collapse.
Wyndham Lewis

All enterprises that are entered into with indiscreet zeal may be pursued with great vigor at first, but are sure to collapse in the end.
Tacitus

We expected that people were just waiting for the collapse of the Soviet Union, or at least for its retreat, and they were going to be full of initiative in all areas of life - in culture, in economy and in politics.
Andrzej Wajda

With the advent of genetic engineering the time required for the evolution of new species may literally collapse.
Dee Hock

Recently released government economic statistics covering 2010, the first year of real recovery from the financial collapse of 2008, found that fully 93 percent of additional income gains coming out of the recession went straight into the wallets and purses of the top 1 percent.
Eric Alterman

I usually point out that most loss of life and property has been due to the collapse of antiquated and unsafe structures, mostly of brick and other masonry.
Charles Francis Richter

The middle class is teetering on the brink of collapse just as surely as AIG was in the fall of 2009 - only this time, it's not just one giant insurance company (and its banking counterparties) facing disaster, it's tens of millions of hardworking Americans who played by the rules.
Arianna Huffington

The more the history of the World War and what led up to it is studied, the more clearly those tragic years become revealed as a vast collapse of civilization.
Arthur Henderson

More Collapse Quotations

Collapse Translations

collapse in Dutch is uiteenvallen, ineenstorten, instorten
collapse in German is Einsturz, zusammenbrechen, zusammenbrechen
collapse in Italian is crollare
collapse in Norwegian is sammenbrudd
collapse in Portuguese is colapso
collapse in Spanish is colapso, derrumbamiento
collapse in Swedish is sammanbrott, kollapsa

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