user2555451's answer is spot on, but just as an observation on how to get these into Python efficiently - the first part of your question - try this:

symbols = set(r"""`~!@#$%^&*()_-+={[}}|\:;"'<,>.?/""")

That:

1. Wraps the string in three quotes to simplify handling the single or double quote issue
2. Puts an r in front of the string to handle the escape character
3. set converts the string to a set

The initial string was missing the close square bracket, just as an aside. Using a simple set operator:

>>> symbols - set(string.punctuation)
{']'}

Short answer, you have to implement it yourself, if you want to keep the output in that format:

#!/usr/bin/env python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

my_list = ['éléphant', 'Hello World']

def print_list (l):
    print ("[" + ", ".join(["'%s'" % str(x) for x in l]) + "]")

print_list (my_list)

Which generates the expected

['éléphant', 'Hello World']

However, note that it would put all elements inside quotes (even numbers, for example), so you may need a more complex implementation, if you're expecting anything other than strings on your list.

Longer answer

The problem is that Python runs str(my_list) under the hoods, before printing it. And that, in turn, runs repr() on each of the list's elements.

Now, repr() on a string returns an ASCII-only representation of the string. That is, those '\xc3' you're seeing are an actual backslash, an actual 'c' and an actual '3' characters.

You can't work around that, as the problem is on the implementation of list.__str__ ().

Below, a sample program to demonstrate that.

#!/usr/bin/env python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

# vi: ai sts=4 sw=4 et

import pprint

my_list = ['éléphant', 'Hello World']

# under the hood, python first runs str(my_list), before printing it
my_list_as_string = str(my_list)

# str() on a list runs repr() on each of the elements.
# However, it seems that __repr__ on a string transforms it to an 
# ASCII-only representation
print ('str(my_list) = %s' % str(my_list))
for c in my_list_as_string:
    print c
print ('len(str(my_list)) = %s' % len(str(my_list)))
print ("\n")

# Which we can confirm here, where we can see that it it also adds the quotes:
print ('repr("é") == %s' % repr("é"))
for c in repr("é"):
    print c
print ('len(repr("é")) == %s' % len(repr("é")))
print ("\n")

# Even pprint fails
print ("pprint gives the same results")
pprint.pprint(my_list)

# It's useless to try to encode it, since all data is ASCII
print "Trying to encode"
print (my_list_as_string.encode ("utf8"))

Which generates this:

str(my_list) = ['\xc3\xa9l\xc3\xa9phant', 'Hello World']
[
'
\
x
c
3
\
x
a
9
l
\
x
c
3
\
x
a
9
p
h
a
n
t
'
,

'
H
e
l
l
o

W
o
r
l
d
'
]
len(str(my_list)) = 41


repr("é") == '\xc3\xa9'
'
\
x
c
3
\
x
a
9
'
len(repr("é")) == 10


pprint gives the same results
['\xc3\xa9l\xc3\xa9phant', 'Hello World']
Trying to encode
['\xc3\xa9l\xc3\xa9phant', 'Hello World']