Disaster

A disaster is a natural or man-made (or technological) hazard resulting in an event of substantial extent causing significant physical damage or destruction, loss of life, or drastic change to the environment. A disaster can be ostensively defined as any tragic event stemming from events such as earthquakes, floods, catastrophic accidents, fires, or explosions. It is a phenomenon that can cause damage to life, property and destroy the economic, social and cultural life of people.

Quotes

• There's no disaster that can't become a blessing, and no blessing that can't become a disaster.
  • Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1970).

• CALAMITY, n. A more than commonly plain and unmistakable reminder that the affairs of this life are not of our own ordering. Calamities are of two kinds: misfortune to ourselves, and good fortune to others.
  • Ambrose Bierce, The Cynic's Dictionary (1906); republished as The Devil's Dictionary (1911).

• Market signals were clear: There's no profit in preventing a future catastrophe.
  • Noam Chomsky, in an interview with C.J. Polychroniou, Chomsky: Ventilator Shortage Exposes the Cruelty of Neoliberal Capitalism (April 1, 2020), Truthout.

• The formula for achieving a successful relationship: You should treat all disasters as if they were trivialities but never treat a triviality as if it were a disaster.
  • Quentin Crisp, Manners from Heaven: A Divine Guide to Good Behaviour (1984), chapter 7.

• The truth is, we like to talk over our disasters, because they are ours ; and others like to listen, because they are not theirs.
  • Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Francesca Carrara (1834), Vol. III, Chapter 34.

• Disaster is a natural part of my evolution, toward tragedy and dissolution.
  • Tyler Durden, in Fight Club (1996) by Chuck Palahniuk, p. 101.

• Dread of disaster makes everybody act in the very way that increases the disaster.
  • Bertrand Russell, New Hopes for a Changing World (1951), p. 132-133.

See also

• Natural disasters