105 Best Elephant Quotes You Won't Forget

Elephants may look huge and intimidating but these famous elephant quotes will show just how loving the animals really are.

As many elephant quotes mention, elephants are intelligent creatures with human traits . For example, did you know that elephants actually mourn and pay homage to their dead?

Elephants symbolize strength and power; they may be the most intelligent animals you have ever met. We have gathered the best elephant quotes around to show you just how great these magnificent creatures really are.

With so many lovely elephant quotes, you may also be inspired to look at these wildlife quotes and funny animal quotes.

Beautiful elephant quotes, like one from the American novelist  Robert McCammon, talking about how the elephants “unburden their wrinkled gray bodies and soar away light spirits at the end” in their secret grave, touch our hearts beyond measure. Here are some of the finest elephant quotes for these awe-inspiring animals, or as John Donne deservingly calls them, "the harmless great thing" that is the elephant!

1.  “Elephants are magnificent creatures.”

- Paul Craig Roberts.

2. “Only elephants should own ivory.”  

– Yao Ming.

3. “Save the elephants… and then you save yourself.”

- Mark Shand.

4. "No one in the world needs an elephant tusk but an elephant."

– Thomas Schmidt.

5. “People don’t realize how amazing elephants are.”

- Prince Harry.

6. “Elephants have the largest brains of any mammal on the face of the Earth...”

- Ingrid Newkirk.

7. “There is mystery behind that masked gray visage, and ancient life force delicate and mighty, awesome and enchanted commanding the silence ordinarily reserved for mountain peaks great fires and the sea.”

- Peter Matthiessen.

8. "Of all African animals, the elephant is the most difficult for man to live with… I can watch elephants (and elephants alone) for hours at a time, for sooner or later the elephant will do something very strange such as mow grass...”

– Peter Matthiessen

9. “The elephant can survive only if forests survive.”

- Mark Shand.

10. “They say that somewhere in Africa the elephants have a secret grave where they go to lie down, unburden their wrinkled gray bodies and soar away light spirits at the end.”

- Robert McCammon.

11. “Dear people with no soul, stop shooting elephants.”

– Russell Crowe.

12. “Elephants love reunions; they recognize one another after years and years of separation and greet each other with wild, boisterous joy.”

- Jennifer Richard Jacobson.

13. “Elephants can sense danger. They're able to detect an approaching tsunami or earthquake before it hits.”

- Jennifer Richard Jacobson.

14. “All I want is a wild elephant; which swishes tones of water merrily all around with its trunk.”

- Nikhil Parekh.

15. “Elephants, it turns out, are surprisingly stealthy.”

- Thomas French.

16.  “The elephant’s love for him was a love I have never known…”

– Benson Bruno.

17. “The elephant needs a thousand times more food than the ant but that is not an indication of inequality.”

- Mahatma Gandhi.

18. “The threat of extinction is more real than many realize. And the damage done to elephants directly leads to destruction of the ecosystem.”

- Li Bingbing.

19. “Our elders say that an elephant does not find its own trunk heavy.”

- Zakes Mda.

20. “Elephants are so wise and so funny and so endangered and so intelligent. I just think there is a lot to learn from them.”

- Gloria Steinem.

21. “The elephant is never won by anger; nor must that man who would reclaim a lion take him by the teeth.”

- John Dryden.

22. “Th' unwieldy elephant, to make them mirth, us'd all his might, and wreathed his lithe proboscis.”

- John Milton.

23.  “If anyone wants to know what elephants are like, they are like people only more so.”

- Peter Corneille.

24. "When western culture developed... We saw animals... rhino horn, the elephant's tusk, we saw it as making money."

- John Kani.

25. "When you look at elephant herds that are nonstressed, the males are never around."

- Mark Shand.

26. “Earlier, 100,000 elephants lived in Kenya... The problem that we have is not that there are now more elephants.”

- Richard Leakey.

27. “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.

28. "Asian elephants have to contend with the spread of settlements and farming... railways, and irrigation canals have carved up former wilderness.”

- Mark Shand.

29. “I’ve known elephants with broken hearts, others with depression.”

- Mark Shand.

30. “The sad thing about destroying the environment... The bluebirds will be gone, and the elephants...”

- Ted Turner.

31. “Elephants are like humans. They are very smart, very logical.”

- Peter Beard.

Famous elephant quotes include all sorts! In one of the most famous elephant quotes, Lyall Watson says that "if elephants didn't exist, you couldn't invent one."Mehmet Murat İldan has also provided us with many great elephant quotes. To enjoy these and more, read on!

32. “We are not the only animal that mourns; apes do, and elephants, and dogs. Yet we are the only one that tortures.”

- Geraldine Brooks.

33. “Elephants don't know anything about the world of ants; the peaks of mountains are oblivious of what is happening on the plains!”

- Mehmet Murat İldan, ‘Antiquary Arago's Diary’.

34. “Elephants can sense danger. They’re able to detect an approaching tsunami or earthquake before it hits.”

- Jennifer Richard Jacobson.

35. “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.

36. “The question is, are we happy to suppose that our grandchildren may never be able to see an elephant except in a picture book?”

- Sir David Attenborough.

37. “Nature's great masterpiece an elephant; the only harmless great thing.”

- John Donne.

38. “It was an exceedingly odd thing to see an elephant in a spacesuit.”

- Alastair Reynolds

39.  “Words are cheap. The biggest thing you can say is 'elephant.'”

- Charlie Chaplin.

40. “What is bigger than an elephant?”

- Plutarch.

41. “It was an elephant. Cause elephants bring good luck, especially if the trunks are up and his trunk was up.”

- Dale Kerrigan.

42. “If elephants didn't exist, you couldn't invent one. They belong to a small group of living things so unlikely they challenge credulity and common sense.”

- Lyall Watson.

43. “It is absurd for a man to kill an elephant... Iis 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…”

- Beryl Markham, ‘West With The Night’.

44. "There's bellowing and trumpeting, ear flapping and rubbing. Trunks entwine."

- Jennifer Richard Jacobson.

45. “A true elephant is the one who never forgets his Herculean strength…”

- Nikhil Parekh.

46.  “To emulate an elephant was very easy; as all you had to do was inflate your persona like a colossal gas balloon...”

- Nikhil Parekh.

47. "We must have bearers, and outriders, and perhaps an elephant — they are so imposing, nothing says ‘Get out of the way’ quite like an elephant in the front...”

– Neil Gaiman.

Lots of elephant quotes suggest that they have many human traits and show some actions that match human behavior and common sense. Find more in these motivating elephant quotes.

48. “The elephant has just one basic gait: an ambling walk; elephants cannot run or jump like other animals.”

– Richard D. Estes.

49. “She owned the road as an elephant owns the veldt and like a big blue elephant moved with massive grace and dignity.”

- David Drake.

50. "You know... they say an elephant never forgets. What they don't tell you is, you never forget an elephant."

- Bill Murray.

51. “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.

52. "The world is not a burden… the world is as light as a feather on an elephant's back."

- Baba Hari Dass.

53. “Without being an elephant sycophant, it is relevant to note that an infant elephant is a lieutenant giant.”

- Vincent Okay Nwachukwu.

54. "People are so difficult. Give me an elephant any day."

- Mark Shand.

55. “One digs a pit in the path of the elephant, but the elephant can read signs; the elephant does not go that way.”

- Oyekan Owomoyela.

56. “I love elephants! It’s my favorite animal.”

- Camila Cabello.

Samuel Richardson famously said that "love will draw an elephant through a key hole." There are plenty more witty elephant quotes comparing love to elephants, check them out here!

57. “I feel as if I go to Africa… I’m just going to… adopt an elephant, and it’s going to be my friend.”

-  Dianna Agron.

58. "Love will draw an elephant through a key hole."

- Samuel Richardson.

59.  “I have a memory like an elephant. In fact elephants often consult me.”

- Noel Coward.

60. "A camel makes an elephant feel like a jet plane."

- Jackie Kennedy.

61. “Elephants love to play around. They are very intelligent animals...”

- Mark Shand.

62. "God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant and the cat."

- Pablo Picasso.

63. “I hate to witness... circus elephants paraded down the streets..."

- K. A. Applegate.

64. “Animals are everywhere. Some are more romantic, like tigers and elephants and chimpanzees...”

- Isabella Rossellini.

65. “Elephants are contagious.”

- Paul Eluard.

You may not have ever met Herb Caen, but his cute and hilarious elephant quotes will make you giggle. On a funny note, lots of elephant quotes will make you giggle so why not find a smile today with these elephant quotes?

66. “If you do not have a memory like an elephant, leave impressions like one.”

– Unknown*.

67. "I have a memory like an elephant. I remember every elephant I’ve ever met."

– Herb Caen.

68. “… the challenge for all of us is to have the heart of a poet and the skin of an elephant.”

- Mira Nair.

69. “When the elephants walk, the forests walks with them.”

– Sudha Ramen.

70. "He who mounts a wild elephant goes where the elephant goes."

-Randolph Bourne.

71. “My roommate got a pet elephant. Then it got lost. It's in the apartment somewhere.”

- Steven Wright.

72. "Big or small, elephants are elephants, after all."

― Karen Lord, 'The Best of All Possible Worlds'.

73. “When there is an invisible elephant in the room, one is from time to time bound to trip over a trunk.”

- Karen Joy Fowler.

74. “Mediocrity is the elephant in the room.”

- Kevin Spacey.

75. “When there's an elephant in the room introduce him.”

- Randy Pausch.

76.  “They say an elephant never forgets. Well, you are not an elephant. Take notes, constantly…”

- Aaron Koblin.

77. “I was called 'Dumbo,' like the elephant, as a child because I couldn't understand things at school.”

- Anthony Hopkins.

78. “Psychoanalysts and elephants, they never forget.”

- Arthur Laurents.

79. “… you thought elephants were all sweetness… this one had the time of her life scaring the bejeezus out of those dudes.”

- James Patterson.

80.  “It is better to own 10% of an elephant than 100% of a rat.”

- Arthur Mutambara.

81. “The worst place to be is in the middle. When elephants fight, the grass gets trampled.”

- Andrew Vachss.

82. "If there's a pink elephant in the room, I'll identify it and say it."

- Angela Rayner.

83. “Elephants and grandchildren never forget.”

- Andy Rooney.

84. "Jackie had a keen eye for talent, and like an elephant never forgot..."

- Audrey Meadows.

85. “An elephant: A mouse built to government specifications.”

- Lazarus Long.

86. “They couldn't hit an elephant at this distance.”

- General John B. Sedgwick.

87. “I'm an elephant today. I will need to have lots of room and also a bowl of water on the floor.”

- Jesse Ball.

88. “The knife flaying the elephant does not have to be large, only sharp!”

- Andre Norton.

89. "Wallowing was for elephants, depressing people, and depressing elephants."

― Cassandra Clare, 'What Really Happened in Peru'.

90. "I have a face like the behind of an elephant."

- Charles Laughton.

91. "Plastic surgery is like a big elephant sitting in the Hollywood living room."

- Patricia Heaton.

92. "I always think I look like the Elephant Man - I can't get used to my own image."

- Brian Cox.

93. “I meant what… An elephant’s faithful one-hundred percent!”

– Dr. Seuss.

Elephant quotes from movies can be really fun to read. Look out for some quotes from the most popular elephant ever: Dumbo!

94. “Fly, Dumbo... fly.”

- Milly Farrier, ‘Dumbo’.

95. “Come with me. Together, we can soar on that elephant's wings.”

-V. A. Vandevere, 'Dumbo'.

96. "Miss Atlantis: Sir, many of us find you handsome.

Max Medici: I was talking about the elephant!”

- 'Dumbo'.

97. "So foul and fair a day I have not seen."

- Alex, 'Elephant'.

98. "Eeny, meeny, miney, moe. Catch a tiger, by his toe."

- Alex, 'Elephant'.

Did you know that when an elephant is happy it widens its eyes, flaps its ears, and waves its tail from side to side? How cute! Elephant proverbs are as deep as the elephant quotes. Each elephant means more than what eyes see… just like these quotes!

99. “Don’t make an elephant out of a fly.”

– Russian proverb.

100. “The elephant does not bite, it is that trunk one fears.”

–African proverb.

101. “The elephant and tiger are afraid of fire.”

– Indian proverb.

102. “An elephant is not affected by sunshine or rain.”

– Indian proverb.

103. “If you're going to move, move like an elephant, not like a hyena.”

– African proverb.

104. “Don't meddle in assisting the elephant in carrying his tusks.”

– Thai proverb.

105. “The young elephant is born with a thick skin.”

– African proverb.

Here at Kidadl, we have carefully created lots of interesting family-friendly quotes for everyone to enjoy! If you liked our suggestions for elephant quotes, then why not take a look at nature quotes, or conservation quotes for more great quotes?

*Do you know where this quote originated? Please email us to let us know at [email protected]