Walt Disney Quotes (1901-1966)

“Animation offers a medium of story telling and visual entertainment which can bring pleasure and information to people of all ages everywhere in the world.”

“Here in Florida … we have something special we never enjoyed at Disneyland — the blessing of size. There's enough land here to hold all the ideas and plans we can possibly imagine.”

“Every child is born blessed with a vivid imagination. But just as a muscle grows flabby with disuse, so the bright imagination of a child pales in later years if he ceases to exercise it.”

“Disneyland is often called a magic kingdom because it combines fantasy and history, adventure and learning, together with every variety of recreation and fun designed to appeal to everyone.”

“There is more treasure in books than in all the pirates' loot on Treasure Island and at the bottom of the Spanish Main... and best of all, you can enjoy these riches every day of your life.”

“We have created characters and animated them in the dimension of depth, revealing through them to our perturbed world that the things we have in common far outnumber and outweigh those that divide us.”

“Around here, however, we don’t look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things, because we're curious… and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.”

“Courage is the main quality of leadership, in my opinion, no matter where it is exercised. Usually it implies some risk — especially in new undertakings. Courage to initiate something and to keep it going, pioneering and adventurous spirit to blaze new ways, often, in our land of opportunity.”

“The first Mickey Mouse was made by twelve people after hours in a garage. About twelve hundred people are working overtime now in a fifty-one-acre plant.”

“We felt that the public, and especially the children, like animals that are cute and little. I think we are rather indebted to Charlie Chaplin for the idea. We wanted something appealing, and we thought of a tiny bit of a mouse that would have something of the wistfulness of Chaplin — a little fellow trying to do the best he could.”

“I have seen children brought to me in terrible panics, and interestingly enough most often the Walt Disney movies which do depict very disturbing mother figures. The mothers are always killed or sent to the insane asylums in Walt Disney movies. They are among my experience for Frankenstein, the worst movies in the world for children who have had a problems of the loss of a parent.”

“So I took my drawings out there and did an interview and I got accepted right away. They said, "Come to work." So I went to work. Walt was still alive then, and he was working on two things; Sleeping Beauty and building Disneyland. Disneyland occupied, probably, about 80% of his time and we got about 20% of it. I remember the meetings and I remember meeting him. I remember what it was like when what we were building was a film that actually had some soul. A piece of artwork That's what we were filming. It wasn't about "make something quick for the marketers."”

“When I look at the early days when Walt was really in command of the studio, the pictures did not look like each other at all. They were all different. Bambi doesn't look like Snow White. Snow White doesn't look like Pinnochio. Then Dumbo comes along and that's its own movie and then Fantasia what's that? Each one of these was reaching for something. They all followed the rules of good storytelling.”

“Walt wanted to communicate with a global audience. … He wanted to communicate with a multicultural audiance.”

“(Ha!) You belong to Disney, which means you stay busy Cranking out magic and assembly line whimsy! Artists begging me to stop; I won't let 'em! Labor conditions in my shop? I don't sweat 'em! I'm powerful enough to make a mouse gigantic! With only 3 circles, I dominate the planet! (Ha!) Clearly, there's nobody near me! I'm owning this battle! In fact, I own this whole series! So hop on my Steamboat, boys, but don't rock it! I'll put on a smile on your face and green in your pocket! You'll be safe and insured when you're under my employ! Now, look at it! Gaze upon my empire of joy!”

“Disney, for all his pining for a perfect world (embodied in his depiction of a turn-of-the-century Main Street), did not entirely ignore the authentic. He did kill Bambi's mom, remember. He did permit, perhaps encourage, the occasional sense of danger.”

“Disney World has acquired by now something of the air of a national shrine. American parents who don't take their children there sense obscurely that they have failed in some fundamental way, like Muslims who never made it to Mecca.”

“There is a relationship between cartooning and people Miró and Picasso which may not be understood by the cartoonist, but it definitely is related even in the early Disney.”

“He was a very religious man, but he didn't believe you had to go to church to be religious. … He respected every religion. There wasn't any that he ever criticized. He wouldn't even tell religious jokes.”