set can help you filter out the elements from the list that are duplicates. It will work well for str, int or tuple elements, but if your list contains dict or other list elements, then you will end up with TypeError exceptions.
Here is a general order-preserving solution to handle some (not all) non-hashable types:
def unique_elements(iterable):
seen = set()
result = []
for element in iterable:
hashed = element
if isinstance(element, dict):
hashed = tuple(sorted(element.iteritems()))
elif isinstance(element, list):
hashed = tuple(element)
if hashed not in seen:
result.append(element)
seen.add(hashed)
return result
