35 Octopus Quotes Talking To Intelligence and Ocean Lives (2025)
Octopuses, together with squids and cuttlefish, form part of the inkfish class called Cephalopoda. They took their famous eight-legged form long before animals thrived on land. For around 300 million years, they have evolved into unique and crafty creatures, almost alien-like compared to other animals. We have carefully selected these octopus quotes to shed light on these slimy, multi-appendaged sea animals.
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Best Octopus Quotes
As the name implies, the octopus (Greek word for eight-foot) has eight tentacles that it uses to swim, crawl, and hunt. We have all known this fact since we were kids, but did you know they have three hearts? Two will pump blood past the gills, and the other larger one circulates blood around the body.
Here are our chosen best quotes about this unique and mysterious creature. To learn more about them, read our rundown of all the octopus facts you need.
"Talent without discipline is like an octopus on roller skates. There's plenty of movement, but you never know if it's going to be forward, backwards, or sideways."
- H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
"The mind is its own enemy, that fights itself with the innumerable pliant and ineluctable arms of the octopus."
- Rebecca West
"The tentacles of today reach out like an octopus to swallow yesterday."
- Gladys Taber
Amazing Quotes About The Wonders Of Octopus In Nature
Aristotle thought them dumb. Little did he know that octopuses are super intelligent creatures, thanks to their nine brains. Interestingly, the octopus has one small brain for each tentacle and a larger one as its main command center.
They have 5 million neurons, two-thirds of which are distributed among the tentacles. This efficient setup allows each tentacle to act semi-independently while receiving orders from the central brain.
You’ll find several videos online showing how intelligent the octopus is. And, of course, many capture the fluid movements in shape-shifting ways that have made them a sight to behold. This next section features our choices of quotes about the octopus in its natural environment. Here, we also answer that other burning question: what is the correct plural of octopus?
"Octopuses have hundreds of suckers, each one equipped with its own ganglion with thousands of neurons. These 'mini-brains' are interconnected, making for a widely distributed nervous system. That is why a severed octopus arm may crawl on its own and even pick up food."
- Frans de Waal
"The fact that three-fifths of an octopus' neurons are not in their brain, but in their arms, suggests that each arm has a mind of its own."
- Sy Montgomery
"Octopus can fish for prey while deciding what color and pattern to turn, what shape to make their bodies, be on alert for predators and aware how far away their dens are."
- Sy Montgomery
"A giant Pacific octopus—the largest of the world’s 250 or so octopus species—can easily overpower a person."
- Sy Montgomery
"If you go to the octopus, and if you're not too squeamish, dissect it. You'll find that it has a camera eye which is remarkable similar to our own"
- Simon Conway Morris
"We split from our common ancestor with the octopus half a billion years ago. And yet, you can make friends with an octopus."
- Sy Montgomery
Witty Quotes About Octopuses Used As A Metaphor
Like other cephalopods, octopuses are well-known for their great escape. They temporarily expel ink to distract their predators, but octopuses are also great hunters. Typically, they pounce on their prey, trap them with their tentacles, and engulf them whole. They eat small seafood like clams and shrimp. The largest octopus, the giant Pacific octopus, can consume small sharks.
You can read these witty octopus quotes below and apply the metaphors to your conversations.
"Exaggeration is the octopus of the English language."
- Matthew Pearl
"Every science is a mutilated octopus. If its tentacles were not clipped to stumps, it would feel its way into disturbing contacts"
- Charles Fort
"When Mary is confused or perplexed, she spurts anger the way an octopus spurts ink, and hides in the dark cloud of it."
- John Steinbeck
"Fashion is such an octopus. You're connected to so many people: suppliers, pattern makers, production teams, marketing teams, vendors."
- Raf Simons
"The monster of advertisement...is a sort of octopus with innumerable tentacles. It throws out to right and left, in front and behind, its clammy arms, and gathers in, through its thousand little suckers, all the gossip and slander and praise afloat."
- Sarah Bernhardt
Other Funny Octopus Quotes To Brighten Your Day
Octopuses are masters of disguise. They can change their skin pigments to blend with their surroundings, but one species takes it up a notch. Mimic octopuses change color and also their shape and, interestingly, their behavior. They can fool their predators by impersonating other dangerous marine animals like sole fish, lionfish, and sea snakes.
Meanwhile, other octopuses will disguise themselves from predators by hiding between coconut halves. Others contort their soft body into all sorts of tight spaces. Imagine a funny scenario with this image as you read our next selection of quotes about the octopus with a humorous angle.
"Have you ever heard a blindfolded octopus unwrap a cellophane-covered bathtub?"
- Norton Juster
"The most repulsive thing you could ever imagine is the inside of a camel's mouth. That and watching a girl eat octopus or squid."
- Marlon Brando
"Her opponent was half pill bug, half octopus, and all butt ugly. I closed my eyes again."
- Richard Roberts
"Dressing a baby is like putting an octopus into a string bag, making sure none of the arms hang out."
- Chris Evans
"There's really not a difference between an octopus and, like, a giant pile of snot."
- Mike Rowe
"I got to try the bagpipes. It was like trying to blow an octopus."
- James Galway
Quotes From Literature Describing the Octopus As A Monster
Like the shrouded mystery about octopuses, scientists have also made a small dent in studying the oceans. Explorers have only chartered 5% of the ocean surface, which perhaps contributed to famous monster stories about cephalopods, which have been told widely since the 10th century. We have Kraken from Norse mythology, Cthulhu from H.P. Lovecraft's The Call of Cthulhu, and many other reiterations in modern films.
Related read: How much of the ocean has been explored?
Octopuses possess an almost other-worldly mystique. Read on through this next section for our selection of quotes from famous authors that feature the scarier qu
"Crank, You See isn't any ordinary monster. It's like a giant octopus, weaving its tentacles not just around you, but through you, squeezing not hard enough to kill you, but enough to keep you from reeling until you try to get away. Try, and you hunger for it grasping clutch, the way its tendrils prop you up, your need intensifying exponentially every minute you refuse to admit its being."
- Ellen Hopkins
"If I say that my somewhat extravagant imagination yielded simultaneous pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature, I shall not be unfaithful to the spirit of the thing."
- H.P. Lovecraft
"Just as an octopus may have his den in some ocean cave, and come floating out a silent image of horror to attack a swimmer, so I picture such a spirit lurking in the dark of the house which he curses by his presence, and ready to float out upon all whom he can injure."
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Other Noteworthy Octopus Quotes In Art And Literature
Another fascinating yet grim feature of an octopus is how they reproduce. A mother octopus lays 20,000-80,000 eggs in clusters. She carefully attends to her eggs and stops actively seeking out food until she starves to death. Male octopuses also die a few months after mating. Scientists theorized that this might be a survival measure for the baby octopus against older octopuses who are natural cannibals.
As you read these other noteworthy octopus quotes from art and literature, remember the eight-legged creatures' fascinating but tragic life cycle.
"The family, that dear octopus from whose tentacles we never quite escape, nor in our innermost hearts never quite wish to."
- Dodie Smith
"He had electric blue hair that had stuck around his head like tendrils of a startled octopus."
- Cassandra Clare
"I bear my burden proudly for all to see, to conquer prejudice and ignorance and hate with knowledge and sincerity and love. Whenever you are threatened by a hostile presence, you emit a thick cloud of love like an octopus squirts out ink."
- William S. Burroughs
"How many color patterns can your severed arm produce in one second?"
- Wendy Williams
"Brandt and a couch-or worse, an empty master bedroom-were a very bad combo. He morphed from vaguely risque fling to bad-boy octopus man whenever he was in the vicinity of any marginally promising flat surface."
- Diana Peterfreund
"In their brief time together Slothrop forms the impression that this octopus is not in good mental health, though where's his basis for comparing?"
- Thomas Pynchon
"Now, I don't know if you can appreciate this without actually knowing her, but getting Mrs. Stricker to laugh is like getting an octopus to stand up on two legs."
- James Patterson
"And I wonder if, in the dark night of the sea, there, deep within its own sphere of instinct, the octopus dreams of me."
- N. Scott Momaday
"When the narrator feels like an octopus, when he says his limbs are starting to multiply, he means he has inklings of orders of perception beyond his individual body."
- Ben Lerner
Thought-Provoking Quotes About Life And Living Featuring The Octopus
Not all blood is red; sometimes, it is blue, like in octopuses. Iron makes the blood red, but the octopus's blue blood contains copper instead. This royal feature allows them to survive extreme temperatures. They are also kings and queens who maintain their population on an upward trajectory.
As you read the remaining octopus quotes, let us remember to contribute to the conservation of all endangered members of the animal kingdom. As human beings, we still have much more to do to protect the other creatures we share our planet with.
"But to ask pity of our body is like discoursing in front of an octopus, for which our words can have no more meaning than the sound of the tides, and with which we should be appalled to find ourselves condemned to live."
- Marcel Proust Sound
"At twenty life was like wrestling an octopus. Every moment mattered. At thirty it was a walk in the country. Most of the time your mind was somewhere else. By the time you got to seventy, it was probably like watching snooker on the telly."
- Mark Haddon
"Oh, I love hugging. I wish I was an octopus, so I could hug 10 people at a time!"
- Drew Barrymore
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