Elephant Attitude Quotes

Daemon was the pissy pink elephant in the room with a bad attitude.

I think what hurts the most is that I just really want to belong. I want to stand inside the circle of other people and be noticed for the right things, but it seems like the wrong things are always bigger. And all the advie I've ever read --smile more, be yourself, dream big, stay positive--seems to have some darker side that's never mentioned.

Daemon was the pissy pink elephant in the room with the bad attitude.

From imperial, economic and ideological causes, many cultures are the inheritors, and hence the prisoners, of attitudes of scorn and disdain for other faiths – outlooks which are not ennobling to anyone.

This hostility to unnatural sex had a demographic consequence of high importance. Puritan moralists condemned as unnatural any attempt to prevent conception within marriage. This was not a common attitude in world history. Most primitive cultures have practiced some form of contraception, often with high success. Iroquois squaws made diaphragms of birchbark; African slaves used pessaries of elephant dung to prevent pregnancy. European women employed beeswax disks, cabbage leaves, spermicides of lead, whitewash and tar. During the seventeenth and early eighteenth century, coitus interruptus and the use of sheepgut condoms became widespread in Europe.14

Why a man, because he has millions, should assume that they confer omniscience in all branches of knowledge, is something which may be left to the psychologist to answer, but most of those thrown much in contact with millionaires will agree that an attitude of infallibility is typical of a fair majority. A professor who has devoted his life to a subject modestly makes a statement. "You are all wrong," says the man of millions, "It is this way——". As a connoisseur he seems to think that because he can pay for anything he fancies, he is accredited expert as well as potential owner. Topics he does not care for are "bosh," those which he has a smattering of, he simply appropriates; his prejudices are, in his opinion, expert criticism; his taste impeccable; his judgment infallible; and to him the world is a pleasance built for his sole pleasuring. But to the rest of us who also have to live in it with as much harmony as we can, such persons are certainly elephants at large in the garden. We can sometimes induce them to pass through gently, but they are just as likely at any moment to pull up our fences and push the house itself over on our defenseless heads.

From the tiny ant to the human or elephant, we are all Earthlings'' - Phoenix, Chapter 12, Earthlings - The Beginning

I wanted to help rescue this species from endangerment by learning about the elephants’ intricate social structure, increasing worldwide attention to this species through my research and scientific advancements in knowledge. However, when the scientific papers that I had spent years writing finally came out, there was little reaction. I felt proud of my scientific accomplishments but was sad that I wasn’t doing more for the species that I cared about so much. The following year after I graduated, a new paper by one of my colleagues in Gabon found that between 2002-2011, the duration of my Ph.D. plus a few years, over 60% of the entire forest elephant population declined due to poaching[5]. The poaching was almost exclusively driven by the consumption of their tusks as sources for carving statues, jewelry, and other decorative objects. The true conservation issue had nothing to do with studying the elephants themselves. What was the point of studying a species if it might not exist in a few decades?  If I really wanted to help forest elephants, I should have been studying the people, the consumers who were purchasing ivory to determine if there were ways to change attitudes towards ivory and purchasing behavior. Yes, having rangers on the ground to protect parks and elephants is important, but if there is no decrease in demand, it will constantly be an uphill battle. All of the solutions to the conservation problems of forest elephants are social, political, and economic first.  If you are interested in pursuing wildlife biology as a career for conservation purposes (like I was) or because you love animals (also me), you might be better suited in another career if research is not your thing but can still work for a conservation organization. Nonprofits need lawyers, financial planners, fundraising experts, and marketing executives to name a few. When I perused the job boards of nonprofit organizations, I was surprised by how few research positions there were. There were far more in fundraising, marketing, and development. Even if you don’t work directly for conservation, honestly, you can still make a difference and help conservation efforts in other ways outside of your career. A lot of conservation is really about investing in programs and habitat, so species stay protected. For example, if you can purchase and/or donate money to organizations that buy large areas of land, this land can be set aside for wildlife conservation. The biggest threat to wildlife is habitat loss and simply buying more land, keeping it undeveloped, and/or restoring it for species to live on, is one of the major means to solve the biodiversity crisis.

If attachment underlies care and sympathy, the attitude toward dead or dying companions is worth investigating because there is no more poignant evidence for attachment than agony following the final breath of a relative or companion. A well-known example is elephants, who sometimes pick up the ivory or bones of a dead herd member, hold the pieces in their trunks, and pass them around. Some pachyderms return for years to the spot where a relative died, touching and inspecting the relics. Do they miss the other? Do they recall how he or she was during life?

My obsession with cars is based on my obsession with the environment. Food, housing and transportation are the three big human and environmental issues. That's where most of our resources go and where most of our pollution is generated...Transportation is the big elephant in the bedroom that no one wants to seriously discuss. (from an interview in Attitude, 2002)

The attitude that homosexual activity is not "genuine" sexual, courtship, or pair-bonding behavior is also sometimes made explicit in the descriptions and terminology used by researchers... This attitude is also encoded directly in the words used for homosexual behaviors: rarely do animals of the same sex ever simply "copulate" or "court" or "mate" with one another (as do animals of the opposite sex). Instead, male walruses indulge in "mock courtship" with each other, male African elephants and gorillas have "sham matings", while female sage grouse and male hanuman langurs and common chimpanzees engage in "pseudo-matings". Musk-oxen participate in "mock copulations", mallard ducks of the same sex form "pseudo-pairs" with each other, and blue-bellied rollers have "fake" sexual activity. Male lions engage in "feigned coitus" with one another, male orang-utans and savanna baboons take part in "pseudo-sexual" mountings and other behaviors, while mule deer and hammerheads exhibit "false mounting"... Even the use of the term 'homosexual' is controversial. Although the majority of scientific sources on same-sex activity classify the behavior explicitly as "homosexual" - and a handful even use the more loaded terms 'gay' or 'lesbian' - many scientists are nevertheless loath to apply this term to any animal behavior. In fact, a whole "avoidance" vocabulary of alternate, and putatively more "neutral", words have come into use... The use of "alternate" words such as 'unisexual' is sometimes advocated precisely because of the homophobia derived by the term 'homosexual': one scientist reports that an article on animal behavior containing 'homosexual' in its title was widely received with a "lurid snicker" by biologists, many of whom never got beyond the "sensationalistic wording" of the title to actually read its contents.

Any judge’s remarks on any person offended by the defamation of a third party are themselves immoral and even defamatory and aspersion; such words and conduct also demonstrate to support the accused party. Everybody knows that the law and justice are blind, but if a judge proves through their remarks of judicial vanity that the law and justice are not blind in their court, consequently, such judges become unqualified to pursue such a matter, they should quit. Be aware that the law is mostly for the public, not the republican authorities; similarly, the rules of the United Nations are only for its methodical members, not the veto holders. Accordingly, the teeth of an elephant define that in a suitable and relevant context since children feel happy and enjoy it in a circus without realizing the reality, even if their parents pay for it. Indeed, it is an authentic fact. Abolishing or violating any law, rule, or constitution is an act of disloyalty to the state and its people; it does not fall under good faith; it is the way of the traitor. Giving legal status to such a traitor for any reason is itself a crime. Apply the law, discipline, attitude, or morality to yourself before you apply it to others. The breaking and breaching of law, rule, or principle for transparent justice to save human rights and the lives of people in danger is not a violation of such juristic and moral terms. The law, the constitution, or the manifesto of political parties is similar to two sets of teeth, like an elephant, one for eating and one for floating. Forget human rights, transparent justice, neutrality, fairness, sincerity, and honesty since they only exist in books, not in practice; it is a bitter reality that the world is a trade chamber, and we live and breathe in it with our interests. Such justice, which one cannot achieve without substantial money, represents not veritable justice but judicial business for rich ones through lawyers and judges. However, real justice only stays in dictionaries and law books for reading since one can see itself in the mirror but cannot draw it out of it.

I slip another piece into place, bridging a large elephant ear to its head. “C’mon, Nat, you’ve got to admit romance novels are a touch predictable.” “Why? Because the couple ends up together?” “Exactly.” “That’s a rule of the genre, Connor,” she says. “Which you would know if you’d bothered to even google it.” I wave her on, hearing the way she’s frothing up over this. “Go on. Get it all out.” “You describe them as my ‘guilty pleasure.’ Do you have any idea how condescending that is?” “Well, don’t they bring you pleasure?” I ask, confused. “How is that condescending?” “Yes, but why should I feel guilty for reading something that makes me happy?” I open my mouth to respond, and she pins me with a look so clear in its meaning it might as well be a warning shot fired overhead. “You treat the things I love as if they’re silly or something to be indulged,” she says. “My point, Conn, is this: You asked me if it was weird that she’s questioning your attitude. But if I see your condescension—and I’m someone who knows what a good man you are in a million other ways—what do you think she saw, when she doesn’t know you at all and her entire career is centered around something you believe is beneath you?” I close my eyes as this one settles in. I worked on a project once where an expert said intolerance is a failure of curiosity, and it’s always stuck with me. Am I being quick to judge things I know next to nothing about? “Okay. Yeah.” “Read one of her books.” Nat picks up her spoon again. “Keep an open mind and you might even like it.

Every day is a gift. Some go in the white elephant closet and some go on the mantel.

Every day is a gift. Some go on the white elephant shelf, some go on the mantel.

families that show love, respect and good attitude probably better than human beings’, and that the ‘wilderness is perhaps more civilised than what we call civilisation’. He concludes that lessons learnt from the elephants may ‘be the answer to mankind’.

Wartime hardened British attitudes to the prisoners as well. Gandhi ‘should not be released on the account of a mere threat of fasting’, Churchill told the Cabinet. ‘We should be rid of a bad man and an enemy of the Empire if he died.’ He was quite prepared to facilitate the process, suggesting that the Mahatma should be ‘bound hand and foot at the gates of Delhi, and let the viceroy sit on the back of a giant elephant and trample [the Mahatma] into the dirt.’ What

What is the real issue then, according to you?' Scholscher was on the point of replying that men needed another company than their own kind, that they craved it desperately, like an almost physical presence, and that nothing on earth seemed big enough to satisfy that urge, those roots of heaven, as Islam called them, which were forever gripping and torturing man's heart, but he felt that this sort of talk, and indeed of thinking, ill became the Army uniform he was wearing. The feeling dated probably from the time when, as a young cadet at Saint-Cyr, the thin stripe of a sub-lieutenant had been all the horizon to which he aspired. He smiled faintly at the memory of his youth. For a long time the Army uniform had remained for him the very symbol of what he had most fervently desired from the first metaphysical stirrings of adolescence: fidelity to a rule. This forbade certain attitudes, certain states of mind. So he kept his reflections to himself — all the more so since, these last years, he felt less and less need to exchange ideas with other men, because essentially they no longer came to him as questions, but as certainties. He had thus nothing left but minor curiosities. Sucking at his pipe, he gave the Dutchman a very friendly glance. 'What is the issue, according to you, if it isn't elephants?' Haas repeated, in a slightly menacing tone. 'Loneliness, I suppose,' said Scholscher vaguely.

What happens is that people don’t know, and so they can’t help me,’ he was saying calmly. ‘But when they open their morning newspapers and see that thirty thousand elephants are being killed every year to make paper knives and billiard balls, and that there’s a man who's doing his damnedest to stop this mass murder, they’ll raise hell. When they hear that out of a hundred baby elephants captured for the zoos eighty die in the first days, you’ll see what public opinion will say. There's such a thing as popular feeling, you know. That’s the kind of thing that makes a government fall, I tell you. All that’s needed is for the people to know.’ ’It was intolerable. I listened gaping, absolutely struck dumb. The man had faith in us, totally and unshakably, and that was something, a faith in us that looked as strong, as natural, as irrational as the elements, as the sea or the wind — something, by God, that looked in the end like the force of truth itself. I had to make an effort to defend myself — not to succumb to that amazing naivete. He really believed that people still had the generosity, the heart, in the ugly times we live in, to worry not only about themselves, but about elephants as well. It was enough to make you weep. I stood there in silence, staring at him — admiring him, I should say — with that gloomy, obstinate expression of his, and that damned briefcase. Ridiculous, if you like, yet also disarming, because I felt he was completely convinced by all the beautiful things man has sung about himself in his moments of inspiration. And with it all, a pigheaded obstinacy — the revolting thoroughness of a schoolmaster who’s got it into his head that he’ll make humanity do its homework and would not hesitate to punish it if it misbehaved. You can see from what I say that he was a highly contagious man.

To the white man the elephant had long meant merely ivory, and to the black man it always meant merely meat — the most abundant quantity of meat that a lucky hit with the assagai could procure for him. The idea of the 'beauty' of the elephant, of the 'nobility' of the elephant, was the idea of a man who had had enough to eat, a man of restaurants and of two meals a day and of museums of abstract art — an idea typical of a decadent society that takes refuge in abstractions from the ugly social realities it is incapable of facing, and makes itself drunk on vague and twilight notions of the beautiful, of the noble, of the fraternal, simply because the purely poetic attitude is the only one which history allows it to adopt. Bourgeois intellectuals insisted that a society on the march and in full spate should encumber itself with elephants simply because in that way they themselves hoped to escape destruction. They knew that they were just as anachronistic and cumbersome as these prehistoric animals; it was just a way of claiming mercy for themselves, of asking to be spared. Morel was typical of them. But to human beings in Africa, the elephant’s only beauty was the weight of his meat, and as for human dignity, that was first and foremost a full belly. Perhaps, when the African does have his belly full, perhaps then he too will take an interest in the beauty of the elephant and will in general give himself up to agreeable meditations on the splendors of nature. For the moment, nature spoke to him of splitting the elephant’s belly open and plunging his teeth into it and eating, eating till he dropped, because he did not know where the next morsel would come from.