Walt Disney
Animation pioneer and co-founder of The Walt Disney Company.
Quotes
I always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter.
SourceHow to Be Like Walt: Capturing the Magic Every Day of Your Life (2004) · via Wikiquote
It's kind of fun to do the impossible.
SourceAs quoted in Animated Architecture (1982) by Derek Walker, p. 10 · via Wikiquote
All the adversity I've had in my life, all my troubles and obstacles, have strengthened me... You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.
SourceAs quoted in The Story of Walt Disney (1957) · via Wikiquote
There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate's loot on Treasure Island.
SourceAs quoted in Peter's Quotations: Ideas for Our Time (1977) by Laurence J. Peter · via Wikiquote
A man should never neglect his family for business.
SourceHow to Be Like Walt: Capturing the Magic Every Day of Your Life (2004) · via Wikiquote
Disneyland will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world.
SourceThe Quotable Walt Disney (2001) · via Wikiquote
Laughter is America's most important export.
SourceThe Quotable Walt Disney (2001) · via Wikiquote
Animation can explain whatever the mind of man can conceive. This facility makes it the most versatile and explicit means of communication yet devised for quick mass appreciation.
SourceAs quoted in OpenGL Shading Language (2006) by Randi J. Rost, p. 411 · via Wikiquote
Mickey Mouse is, to me, a symbol of independence. He was a means to an end.
SourceQuoted in A Walt Disney World Resort Outing · via Wikiquote
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.
SourceAs quoted in "COSI exhibit explores world of cartoons" by Jeffrey Zupanic in The Review (2 August 2007) · via Wikiquote
We allow no geniuses around our Studio.
SourceAs quoted in Animated Architecture (1982) by Derek Walker, p. 10 · via Wikiquote
Disneyland is a work of love. We didn't go into Disneyland just with the idea of making money.
SourceThe Quotable Walt Disney (2001) · via Wikiquote
I do not like to repeat successes, I like to go on to other things.
SourceAs quoted in Success (2003) by Ariel Books · via Wikiquote
I believe in being an innovator.
SourceAs quoted in Cult of the Mouse · via Wikiquote
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.
SourceAs quoted August 2004 in How to Be Like Walt · via Wikiquote
We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.
The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.
I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I have ever known.
You can design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make the dream a reality.
The more you like yourself, the less you are like anyone else, which makes you unique.
I only hope that we don't lose sight of one thing - that it was all started by a mouse.
I would rather entertain and hope that people learned something than educate people and hope they were entertained.
When you believe in a thing, believe in it all the way, implicitly and unquestionable.
You're dead if you aim only for kids. Adults are only kids grown up, anyway.
Times and conditions change so rapidly that we must keep our aim constantly focused on the future.
I have been up against tough competition all my life. I wouldn't know how to get along without it.
Movies can and do have tremendous influence in shaping young lives in the realm of entertainment towards the ideals and objectives of normal adulthood.
When you're curious, you find lots of interesting things to do.
Our heritage and ideals, our code and standards - the things we live by and teach our children - are preserved or diminished by how freely we exchange ideas and feelings.
I'd say it's been my biggest problem all my life... it's money. It takes a lot of money to make these dreams come true.
I don't like formal gardens. I like wild nature. It's just the wilderness instinct in me, I guess.
We believed in our idea - a family park where parents and children could have fun- together.
Of all of our inventions for mass communication, pictures still speak the most universally understood language.
We are not trying to entertain the critics. I'll take my chances with the public.
I have no use for people who throw their weight around as celebrities, or for those who fawn over you just because you are famous.
All cartoon characters and fables must be exaggeration, caricatures. It is the very nature of fantasy and fable.
Of all the things I've done, the most vital is coordinating those who work with me and aiming their efforts at a certain goal.
Whenever I go on a ride, I'm always thinking of what's wrong with the thing and how it can be improved.
There's nothing funnier than the human animal.
You reach a point where you don't work for money.
I never called my work an 'art'. It's part of show business, the business of building entertainment.
I am not influenced by the techniques or fashions of any other motion picture company.
Disneyland is a show.
Mickey Mouse popped out of my mind onto a drawing pad 20 years ago on a train ride from Manhattan to Hollywood at a time when business fortunes of my brother Roy and myself were at lowest ebb and disaster seemed right around the corner.
I try to build a full personality for each of our cartoon characters - to make them personalities.
Crowded classrooms and half-day sessions are a tragic waste of our greatest national resource - the minds of our children.
We did it Disneyland, in the knowledge that most of the people I talked to thought it would be a financial disaster - closed and forgotten within the first year.
People still think of me as a cartoonist, but the only thing I lift a pen or pencil for these days is to sign a contract, a check, or an autograph.
It's no secret that we were sticking just about every nickel we had on the chance that people would really be interested in something totally new and unique in the field of entertainment.
When people laugh at Mickey Mouse, it's because he's so human; and that is the secret of his popularity.
Animation is different from other parts. Its language is the language of caricature. Our most difficult job was to develop the cartoon's unnatural but seemingly natural anatomy for humans and animals.
Disneyland is the star, everything else is in the supporting role.
I started, actually, to make my first animated cartoon in 1920. Of course, they were very crude things then and I used sort of little puppet things.
Quotes without a listed source are commonly attributed to Walt Disney. We add sources as we confirm them. How we source quotes
Disputed
Sources disagree about whether these words are genuine.
All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.
Why it is disputedCh. 3 : Imagination Unlimited, p. 63; Unsourced variant: All your dreams can come true if you have the courage to pursue them. · via Wikiquote
Often misattributed
These are frequently credited to Walt Disney, but the evidence points elsewhere.
If you can dream it, you can do it.
Actual originTom Fitzgerald, a Disney Imagineer, as quoted in Ask Dave by Dave Smith (27 February - 12 March 2013): · via Wikiquote
You can't just let nature run wild.
Actual originWalter Joseph Hickel, on the killing of wolves, as quoted in Living With Wolves (2005) by James Dutcher. p. 8 · via Wikiquote