The elephant has a thick skin, a head full of ivory, and as everyone who has seen a circus parade knows, proceeds best by grasping the tail of its predecessor.
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Comment on the 1960 Richard Nixon presidential campaign and the Republican symbol, in news summaries (30 August 1960), as quoted in The New Language of Politics: An Anecdotal Dictionary of Catchwords, Slogans and Political Usage (1968) by William Safire