quotes about Elephants
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OK, the rule is, you can [make love to] an elephant if you want to, but if you do you can't cover the circus.
-- A. M. Rosenthal -
They say an elephant never forgets. Well, you are not an elephant. Take notes, constantly. Save interesting thoughts, quotations, films, technologies…the medium doesn't matter, so long as it inspires you. When you're stumped, go to your notes like a wizard to his spellbook. Mash those thoughts together. Extend them in every direction until they meet.
-- Aaron Koblin -
When you have got an elephant by the hind legs and he is trying to run away, it's best to let him run.
-- Abraham Lincoln -
They can't expect anyone to actually pay for a shirt that says, 'I (picture of an elephant) the San Diego Zoo.' What does that even mean?
-- Adam RexSource : Adam Rex (2010). “Fat Vampire: A Never-Coming-of-Age Story”, p.22, Harper Collins
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When the bull's-eye becomes as big in your mind as an elephant, you are sure to hit it.
-- Alejandro Jodorowsky -
Elephants are highly emotional. Whatever they are feeling, they let it out immediately, and the histrionics are over and forgotten in a moment, lasting no longer than the cloud formations that are constantly coming apart and re-forming overhead. There is no guile in pachyderms.
-- Alex Shoumatoff -
Kat had been picking things up since her third birthday, when Hamish and Angus's father took them all to the circus because he needed to "borrow" an elephant.
-- Ally Carter -
I am persuaded that if the brutes even--if the dog, the horse, the ox, the elephant, the bird, could speak, they would confess, that, at the bottom of their nature, their instincts, their sensations, their obtuse intelligence, assisted by organs less perfect than ours, there is a clouded, secret sentiment of this existence of a superior and primordial Being, from whom all emanates, and to whom all returns.
-- Alphonse de Lamartine -
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The knife flaying the elephant does not have to be large, only sharp!
-- Andre NortonSource : Andre Norton (2015). “Wraiths of Time”, p.13, Open Road Media
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The worst place to be is in the middle. When elephants fight, the grass gets trampled.
-- Andrew VachssSource : Andrew Vachss (2001). “Footsteps of the Hawk”, p.289, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard
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I was called 'Dumbo,' like the elephant, as a child because I couldn't understand things at school.
-- Anthony Hopkins -
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My drawing was not a picture of a hat. It was a picture of a boa constrictor digesting an elephant.
-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery -
Psychoanalysts and elephants, they never forget.
-- Arthur Laurents -
It is better to own 10% of an elephant than 100% of a rat.
-- Arthur Mutambara -
Jackie had a keen eye for talent, and like an elephant never forgot. And, he was always right on the mark.
-- Audrey Meadows -
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The world is not a burden; we make it a burden by our desires. When the desires are removed, the world is as light as a feather on an elephant's back.
-- Baba Hari Dass -
I couldn't hit an elephant's ***** with a bull fiddle.
-- Babe Didrikson Zaharias -
Les vrais philosophes sont comme les e le phants, qui en marchant ne posent jamais le second pied a'  terre que le premier ne soit bien affermi. True philosophers are like elephants, who when walking never placetheir second footontheground untilthefirst is steady.
-- Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle -
But as the work proceeded I was continually reminded of the fable about the elephant and the tortoise. Having constructed an elephant upon which the mathematical world could rest, I found the elephant tottering, and proceeded to construct a tortoise to keep the elephant from falling. But the tortoise was not more secure than the elephant, and after some twenty years of very arduous toil, I came to the conclusion that there was nothing more that I could do in the way of making mathematical knowledge indubitable.
-- Bertrand Russell -
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It is absurd for a man to kill an elephant. It is not brutal, it is not heroic, and certainly it is not easy; it is just one of those preposterous things that men do like putting a dam across a great river, one tenth of whose volume could engulf the whole of mankind without disturbing the domestic life of a single catfish.
-- Beryl MarkhamSource : Beryl Markham (2012). “West with the Night”, p.227, Open Road Media
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I suppose if there were a part of the world in which mastodon still lived, somebody would design a new gun, and men, in their eternal impudence, would hunt mastodon as they now hunt elephant. Impudence seems to be the word. At least David and Goliath were of the same species, but, to an elephant, a man can only be a midge with a deathly sting.
-- Beryl Markham -
[Elephants] are less agile and physically less adaptable than ourselves - Nature having developed their bodies in one direction and their brains in another, while human beings, on the other hand, drew from Mr. Darwin's lottery of evolution both the winning ticket and the stub to match it. This, I suppose, is why we are so wonderful and can make movies and electric razors and wireless sets - and guns with which to shoot the elephant, the hare, clay pigeons, and each other.
-- Beryl Markham -
I don't know where I learned elephants like their tongues slapped. Whatever turns you on.
-- Betty White -
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You know...they say an elephant never forgets. What they don't tell you is, you never forget an elephant.
-- Bill Murray -
I'd like to see animals removed from the entertainment business. Chimpanzees and apes won't perform unless you beat them. Circuses keep elephants in chains 90 percent of the time. Elephants need freedom of movement. In circuses, they live in cramped quarters, which is not the life intended for them by nature. Some are beaten daily, forced to do ridiculous tricks and robbed of every shred of dignity.
-- Bob Barker -
Don't fight the rabbits. If you fight the rabbits, the elephants are going to kill you.
-- Bobby Knight -
Q: What's the difference between a tweaker and an elephant? A: The elephant will eat all your peanut butter.
-- Bucky Sinister -
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In my family, my fat family, none of us ever say the word 'fat.' 'Fat' is the word you hear shouted on the playground or in the street - it's never allowed over the threshold of the house. My mum won't have that filth in her house. At home together, we are safe. ... There will be no harm to our feelings here because we never acknowledge fat exists. We never refer to our size. We are the elephants in the room.
-- Caitlin Moran -
As Dr. Chiang puts it, “while Buddha came to China on white elephants, Christ was borne on cannon balls.
-- Carlo M. Cipolla -
Maybe it’s animalness that will make the world right again: the wisdom of elephants, the enthusiasm of canines, the grace of snakes, the mildness of anteaters. Perhaps being human needs some diluting.
-- Carol Emshwiller -
I've always had enough, even if my enough and your enough are as different as an elephant and a minaret.
-- Catherynne M. Valente -
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I have a face like the behind of an elephant.
-- Charles LaughtonSource : "Personal Quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com.
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Words are cheap. The biggest thing you can say is 'elephant'.
-- Charlie ChaplinSource : "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.
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I really enjoyed staying at an encampment at the top of a hill in the Samburu Reserve in Kenya. You reach it on a small plane; there is no electricity, no city noises and you sleep and shower under the Milky Way, with moths fluttering around a kerosene lamp, knowing that there are elephants and lions roaming free in the valley.
-- Cherie Lunghi -
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Elephants suffer from too much patience. Their exhibitions of it may seem superb,-such power and such restraint, combined, are noble,-but a quality carried to excess defeats itself.
-- Clarence Day -
There is an Indian story -- at least I heard it as an Indian story -- about an Englishman who, having been told that the world rested on a platform which rested on the back of an elephant which rested in turn on the back of a turtle, asked (perhaps he was an ethnographer; it is the way they behave), what did the turtle rest on? Another turtle. And that turtle? 'Ah, Sahib, after that it is turtles all the way down
-- Clifford GeertzSource : René Girard, Clifford Geertz, Geoffrey H. Hartman, Stanford University. Committee on Modern Thought and Literature (1973*). “Myth and ritual in Shakespeare: A midsummer night's dream”
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We'll be back to our nature documentary, 'Baggy the Anorexic Elephant' in just a second.
-- Colin MochrieSource : Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.
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It's very difficult to move yourself up bit by bit. It's like trying to eat an elephant for God's sake. I can do it. It's just I have to have it bite by bite, you know. It's possible. You can eat an elephant, but you have to do it bite by bite. You can't do it all in one go.
-- Colin MontgomerieSource : "Monty out to cut elephant into bite-size chunks" by Mark Reason, www.telegraph.co.uk. March 6, 2005.
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When eating an elephant take one bite at a time.
-- Creighton W. Abrams, Jr.Source : Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.
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Animals are indeed more ancient, more complex and in many ways more sophisticated than us. They are more perfect because they remain within Nature’s fearful symmetry just as Nature intended. They should be respected and revered, but perhaps none more so than the elephant, the world’s most emotionally human land mammal.
-- Daphne Sheldrick -
She was a beautiful woman." Gavner sighed, tracing the outline of one of the elephants. "She just had very bad taste in underwear …" "And in boyfriends," I added impishly. Mr. Crepsley burst into laughter at that
-- Darren Shan -
When you hear the elephant music you're hearing what they mean to make.
-- Dave Soldier -
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The question is, are we happy to suppose that our grandchildren may never be able to see an elephant except in a picture book?
-- David Attenborough -
We already live a very long time for mammals, getting three times as many heartbeats as a mouse or elephant. It never seems enough though, does it?
-- David Brin -
If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.
-- Desmond TutuSource : "The secrets of a peacemaker". Interview with Gary Younge, www.theguardian.com. May 22, 2009.
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If you offer them some sugarcane, even elephants can do this, sometimes on the first try.
-- Dharma Mittra -
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I feel as if I go to Africa, I may never come back. I'm just going to live with the animals and adopt an elephant, and it's going to be my friend.
-- Dianna Agron -
Women and elephants never forget.
-- Dorothy ParkerSource : Reginald (1904) "Reginald on Besetting Sins"
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After you're dead and buried and floating around whatever place we go to, what's going to be your best memory of earth? What one moment for you defines what it's like to be alive on this planet. What's your takeaway? Fake yuppie experiences that you had to spend money on, like white water rafting or elephant rides in Thailand don't count. I want to hear some small moment from your life that proves you're really alive.
-- Douglas CouplandSource : "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture". Book by Douglas Coupland, March 15, 1991.
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Think! Think and wonder. Wonder and think. How much water can 55 elephants drink?
-- Dr. Seuss -
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The elephant which supports the world is called Muha-pudma, and the the tortoise which supports the elephant is called Chukwa. In some of the Eastern mythologies we are told that the world stands on the backs of eight elephants, called Achtequed-jams.
-- E. Cobham Brewer -
If you've never seen an elephant ski, you've never been on acid.
-- Eddie IzzardSource : "Eddie Izzard: Definite Article". Documentary, Comedy, 1996.
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Mother elephants in the circus cannot help their babies, but we can,
-- Edie Falco -
There is no creature among all the Beasts of the world which hath so great and ample demonstration of the power and wisdom of almighty God as the Elephant.
-- Edward Topsell -
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What you newspaper and magazine writers, who work in rabbit time, don't understand is that the practice of architecture has to be measured in elephant time.
-- Eero SaarinenSource : Eero Saarinen (1962). “Eero Saarinen on His Work: A Selection of Buildings Dating from 1947 to 1964 with Statements by the Architect”, New Haven : Yale University Press
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The earth was our home, she would have said, but no less was it home to the oxen that pulled our plows or the elephants that roamed in the forest and worked for us. They lived with us as partners whose well-being was inseparable from our own.
-- Eknath Easwaran -
Southampton's barrage balloons floated gleaming in the moonlight like the ghosts of elephants and hippos.
-- Elizabeth Wein -
when there's an elephant in the room, you can't pretend it isn't there and just discuss the ants.
-- Ellen WittlingerSource : Ellen Wittlinger (2012). “Blind Faith”, p.70, Simon and Schuster
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We can't have these great corporations crowding competition off the sidewalks. It's like an elephant saying, "Everyone for himself," as he dances among the chickens.
-- Emanuel Celler -
I have family in Tanzania. I can't even explain the joy of riding through the Tanzania national park and seeing giraffes run across the road and elephants over in a pond and baboons running.
-- Emanuel Cleaver -
I remember my friend Johnny von Neumann used to say, 'with four parameters I can fit an elephant and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.'
-- Enrico FermiSource : Attributed to John von Neumann by Enrico Fermi in "A meeting with Enrico Fermi" by Freeman Dyson in "Nature", Issue 427 (p. 297), www.nature.com. January 22, 2004.
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Starting with a party scene for 600 cast and end up singing on top of a giant elephant...does it get any better than this?
-- Ewan McGregor -
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Although elephants are far more distantly related to us than the great apes, they seem to have evolved similar social and cognitive capacities.
-- Frans de Waal -
Unlike the primate hand, the elephant's grasping organ is also its nose. Elephants use their trunks not only to reach food but also to sniff and touch it. With their unparalleled sense of smell, the animals know exactly what they are going for. Vision is secondary.
-- Frans de Waal -
I was driving pretty much the way everyone drives in LA, like elephants dancing on each others’ backs at a circus.
-- Gary Reilly -
The Internet is like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhoea - massive, difficult to re-direct, awe-inspiring, entertaining, and a source of mind-boggling amounts of excrement when you least expect it.
-- Gene Spafford -
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Be wary of passing the judgment: obscure. To find something obscure poses no difficult, elephants and poodles find many things obscure.
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
The pointes for girls, I always say, have to be like an elephant's trunk; strong and yet flexible and soft.
-- George Balanchine -
We are not the only animal that mourns; apes do, and elephants, and dogs. Yet we are the only one that tortures.
-- Geraldine Brooks -
The world is hollow. It's a lot to take in. Like cracking an egg and finding nothing inside. Or a full grown elephant.
-- Geraldine McCaughrean -
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Ghostface, catch the blast of a hype verse, My glock bursts, leave in a hearse, I did worse. I come rough, tough like an elephant tusk, Ya head rush, fly like Egyptian musk.
-- Ghostface Killah -
We admire elephants in part because they demonstrate what we consider the finest human traits: empathy, self-awareness, and social intelligence. But the way we treat them puts on display the very worst of human behavior.
-- Graydon Carter -
A man would rather be trampled by elephants on fire than tell you he's just not that into you.
-- Greg Behrendt -
Letter 1 To the princess of the elephants, I disappeared exactly one year ago. On that day I received a letter. It called me back to the place where my life with the elephants began Please forgive me, for the silence between us has been unbroken for one year. I will never be more of myself than in these letters. They are my maps of the bird path, and they are all that I know to be true.
-- Gregory Colbert -
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Every culture from the Egyptians to the Mayans to the American Indians to the Bedouins created bestiaries that enabled them to express their relationship with nature. Ashes and Snow is a 21st-century bestiary filled with species from around the world. Nature’s orchestra includes not just Homo sapiens but elephants, whales, manatees, eagles, cheetahs, orangutans, and many others.
-- Gregory Colbert -
The reason I know about 'Tomb Raider' is from when I was researching 'Elephant.' It was 1999, and I was trying to research the Columbine-massacre kids, and they had played video games, and I, at the time, had never really seen one. It was a world I didn't know.
-- Gus Van Sant -
There's a lot of films that have relatively rigid road maps because they have a script and others that are less rigid because they have less of a script, like 'Elephant.' The road map becomes more interpretive, maybe, than one with a detailed script. Editing-wise, they all have their problems.
-- Gus Van Sant -
Women and elephants never forget an injury.
-- Hector Hugh Munro -
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I have a memory like an elephant. I remember every elephant I've ever met.
-- Herb Caen -
Right now I've got just two rules to live by. Rule one: don't taunt elephants. Rule two: don't stand next to anybody who taunts elephants. -Sergeant Schlock
-- Howard Tayler -
Oh, it's you," Curran's voice said quietly. "I thought it was an elephant.
-- Ilona Andrews -
Remember this, for it is as true as true gets: Your body is not a lemon. You are not a machine. The Creator is not a careless mechanic. Human female bodies have the same potential to give birth as well as aardvarks, lions, rhinoceri, elephants, moose, and water buffalo. Even if it has not been your habit throughout your life so far, I recommend that you learn to think positively about your body.
-- Ina May Gaskin -
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We have to be aggressive when those we stick up for have no voice. I don't consider it radical to say cruelty is wrong and that animals should be respected. I consider it radical to eat corpses, put electrodes in animals' heads, make elephants live in chains in the circus, and poison animals we consider a nuisance.
-- Ingrid NewkirkSource : Veg Family, March 2003.
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It wasn't that I hated being asked a bunch of questions. I had nothing against questions. I just didn't like listening to them, because some questions take forever to make sense. Sometimes waiting for a question to finish is like watching someone draw an elephant starting with the tail first. As soon as you see the tail your mind wanders all over the place and you think of a million other animals that also have tails until you don't care about the elephant because it's only one thing when you've been thinking about a million others.
-- Jack GantosSource : Jack Gantos (2011). “Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key”, p.34, Macmillan
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A camel makes an elephant feel like a jet plane.
-- Jackie Kennedy -
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What is true for E. coli is also true for the elephant.
-- Jacques Monod -
I find it striking that the quality of the urban habitat of ***** sapieans is so weakly researched compared to the habitats of gorillas, elephants, and Bengal tigers and panda bears in China…you hardly see anything on the habitat of man in the urban environment.
-- Jan Gehl -
But what humans forget, cells remember. The body, that elephant
-- Jeffrey Eugenides -
Ecologically speaking, a spilt tanker load is like sticking a safety pin into an elephant's foot. The planet barely notices. After the Exxon Valdez accident in Alaska the oil company spent billions tidying up the coastline, but it was a waste of money because the waves were cleaning up faster than Exxon could. Environmentalists can never accept the planet's ability to self-heal.
-- Jeremy Clarkson -
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I'm an elephant today. I will need to have lots of room and also a bowl of water on the floor.
-- Jesse BallSource : FaceBook post by Jesse Ball from Aug 05, 2012
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It's hard for the donkeys to win the race if they're going to carry the elephants on their backs.
-- Jim Hightower -
As big as an elephant is, a whale is still larger. Everything's relative. Even gods have their spot on the food chain.
-- Jim StarlinSource : "Jim Starlin Kills The New Gods". Comicon.com, August 2007.
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It's no good telling somebody they're trying too hard. It's very much like ordering a child to go stand in a corner for a half hour and never once think about elephants.
-- John D. MacDonald -
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Nature's great masterpiece, an elephant; the only harmless great thing.
-- John Donne -
The elephant is never won by anger; nor must that man who would reclaim a lion take him by the teeth.
-- John Dryden -
It was six men of Hindustan To learning much inclined, Who went to see the Elephant (Though all of them were blind) That each by observation Might satisfy the mind.
-- John Godfrey SaxeSource : John Godfrey Saxe (1873). “The Poems of John Godfrey Saxe”, p.259
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In the divine Scriptures, there are shallows and there are deeps; shallows where the lamb may wade, and deeps where the elephant may swim.
-- John Owen -