European Central Bank officials sent strong signals Tuesday that they are willing to consider dramatic steps to guard against dangerously low inflation, including negative interest rates and asset purchases.

The comments by top policy makers from different parts of the euro zone suggest the ECB, faced with a weak economy and strong currency, is prepared to shed some of its cautious approach and take more-aggressive action, as central banks in the U.S., the U.K. and Japan have done for years.

Hermès: ‘We want to be bigger, but not fatter’

“We haven’t exhausted our maneuvering room” on interest rates, Bank of Finland Gov. Erkki Liikanen said in an interview in Helsinki. The ECB’s main lending rate to banks is 0.25%, a record low. A separate deposit rate set by the ECB for overnight funds parked at the central bank has been at zero for nearly two years.

Asked what tools the ECB has remaining, Mr. Liikanen, who has headed Finland’s central bank since 2004 and is on the ECB’s 24-member governing council, cited a negative deposit rate as well as additional loans to banks and asset purchases.

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Other officials, including the heads of the German and Slovakian central banks, offered a similar message on Tuesday.

Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann, in an interview with news agency MNI, didn’t rule out large-scale asset purchases, known as quantitative easing. Mr. Liikanen also said it was an option for the ECB and wouldn’t run afoul of rules prohibiting the central bank from financing governments. The Federal Reserve and Bank of Japan have aggressively used the policy to keep inflation from falling too low, although the ECB has largely resisted this approach, focusing instead on bank-lending programs.

“Several [ECB] policy makers are ready to adopt nonstandard measures to prevent slipping into a deflationary environment,” Slovakian central bank Gov. Josef Makuch said on Tuesday, adding that quantitative easing was one option.

ECB President Mario Draghi was less specific on what the central bank might do. But in a speech in Paris on Tuesday, he sought to underscore the bank’s resolve in fighting excessively low inflation, which weakens consumer spending, business profit and investment.

“We will do what is needed to maintain price stability,” he said, adding that the ECB is paying close attention to the euro’s exchange rate.

An extended version of this story can be found at The Wall Street Journal’s online edition