ALL QUOTES are from Disney himself
On Mickey Mouse
"I only hope that we don't lose sight of one thing - that it was all started by a mouse."
"Mickey Mouse is, to me, a symbol of independence. He was a means to an end."
"When people laugh at Mickey Mouse, it's because he's so human; and that is the secret of his popularity."
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On
Disneyland
"To all that come to this happy place: welcome. Disneyland is your land. Here age relives fond memories of the past, and here youth may savor the challenge and promise of the future. Disneyland is dedicated to the ideals, the dreams, and the hard facts that have created America... with hope that it will be a source of joy and inspiration to all the world."
"It's something that will never be finished. Something that I can keep developing...and adding to."
"Disneyland will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world."
"We believed in our idea - a family park where parents and children could have fun- together."
"Disneyland is the star.Everything else is in the supporting role."
"It has that thing - the imagination, and the feeling of happy excitement- I knew when I was a kid."
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On Walt Disney 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."
"I've always said that there will never be another Disneyland, and I think it's going to work out that way. But it will be the equivalent of Disneyland. We know the basic things that have family appeal. There are many ways that you can use those certain basic things and give them a new decor, a new treatment. This concept here will have to be something that is unique, so there is a distinction between Disneyland in California and whatever Disney does in Florida."
"Believe me, it's the most exciting and challenging assignment we have ever tackled at Walt Disney Productions.
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On Epcot
"But the most exciting and by far the most important part of our Florida Project...in fact, the heart of everything we'll be doing in Disney World...will be our Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow! We call it EPCOT."
"It's like the city of tomorrow ought to be. A city that caters to the people as a service function. It will be a planned, controlled community, a showcase for American industry and research, schools, cultural and educational opportunities.
"EPCOT will be an experimental prototype community of tomorrow that will take its cue from the new ideas and new technologies that are now emerging from the creative centers of American industry. It will be a community of tomorrow that will never be completed, but will always be introducing and testing and demonstrating new materials and systems. And EPCOT will always be a showcase to the world for the ingenuity and imagination of American free enterprise."
"I don't believe there's a challenge anywhere in the world that's more important to people everywhere than finding solutions to the problems of our cities. But where do we begin... how do we start answering this great challenge? Well, we're convinced we must start answering the public need. And the need is for starting from scratch on virgin land and building a special kind of new community that will always be in a state of becoming. I twill never cease to be a living blueprint of the future, where people actually live a life they can't find anywhere else in the world."
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On Animation
"Cartoon animation offers a medium of storytelling and visual entertainment which can bring pleasure and information to people of all ages everywhere in the world."
"In learning the art of storytelling by animation, I have discovered that language has an anatomy. Every spoken word, whether uttered by a living person or by a cartoon character, has its facial grimace, emphasizing the meaning."
"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."
"I take great pride in the artistic development of cartoons. Our characters are made to go through emotions which a few short years ago would have seemed impossible to secure with a cartoon character. Some of the action produced in the finished cartoon of today is more graceful than anything possible for a human to do."
"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."
"To think six years ahead - even two or three - in this business of making animated cartoon features, it takes calculated risk and much more than blind faith in the future of theatrical motion pictures. I see motion pictures as a family-founded institution closely related to the life and labor of millions of people. Entertainment such as our business provides has become a necessity, not a luxury. Curiouly, it is the part which offers us the greatest re assurance about the future in the animation field."
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On Fantasy
"Fantasy, if it's really convincing, can't become dated for the simple reason that it represents a flight into a dimension that lies beyond the reach of time."
"Sheer animated fantasy is still my first and deepest production impulse. The fable is the best storytelling device ever conceived, and the screen is its best medium."
"Fantasy, when properly done in the one medium best adapted to its nature, need never stale for the family taste."
A man should never neglect his family for business.
Walt Disney
Adults are interested if you don't play down to the little 2 or 3 year olds or talk down. I don't believe in talking down to children. I don't believe in talking down to any certain segment. I like to kind of just talk in a general way to the audience. Children are always reaching.
Walt Disney
All cartoon characters and fables must be exaggeration, caricatures. It is the very nature of fantasy and fable.
Walt Disney
All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.
Walt Disney
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.
Walt Disney
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.
Walt Disney
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.
Walt Disney
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.
Walt Disney
Born of necessity, the little fellow [Mickey Mouse] literally freed us of immediate worry. He provided the means for expanding our organization to its present dimensions and for extending the medium cartoon animation towards new entertainment levels. He spelled production liberation for us.
Walt Disney
Crowded classrooms and half-day sessions are a tragic waste of our greatest national resource - the minds of our children.
Walt Disney
Disneyland is a show.
Walt Disney
Disneyland is a work of love. We didn't go into Disneyland just with the idea of making money.
Walt Disney
Give the public everything you can give them, keep the place as clean as you can keep it, keep it friendly.
Walt Disney
I always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter.
Walt Disney
I am not influenced by the techniques or fashions of any other motion picture company.
Walt Disney
I believe in being an innovator.
Walt Disney
I don't like formal gardens. I like wild nature. It's just the wilderness instinct in me, I guess.
Walt Disney
I don't want the public to see the world they live in while they're in the Park (Disneyland). I want to feel they're in another world.
Walt Disney
I first saw the site for Disneyland back in 1953, In those days it was all flat land - no rivers, no mountains, no castles or rocket ships - just orange groves, and a few acres of walnut trees.
Walt Disney
I have been up against tough competition all my life. I wouldn't know how to get along without it.
Walt Disney
I have no use for people who throw there weight around as celebrities, or for those who fawn over you just because you are famous.
Walt Disney
I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I have ever known.
Walt Disney
I never called my work an 'art' It's part of show business, the business of building entertainment.
Walt Disney
I only hope that we don't lose sight of one thing - that it was all started by a mouse.
Walt Disney
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.
Walt Disney
I try to build a full personality for each of our cartoon characters - to make them personalities.
Walt Disney
I would rather entertain and hope that people learned something than educate people and hope they were entertained.
Walt Disney
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.
Walt Disney
If you can dream it, you can do it. Always remember that this whole thing was started with a dream and a mouse.
Walt Disney
It's kind of fun to do the impossible.
Walt Disney
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.
Walt Disney
It's something that will never be finished. Something that I can keep developing... and adding to.
Walt Disney
Laughter is America's most important export.
Walt Disney
Mickey Mouse is, to me, a symbol of independence. He was a means to an end.
Walt Disney
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.
Walt Disney
Movies can and do have tremendous influence in shaping young lives in the realm of entertainment towards the ideals and objectives of normal adulthood.
Walt Disney
Of all of our inventions for mass communication, pictures still speak the most universally understood language.
Walt Disney
Or 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.
Walt Disney
People look at you and me to see what they are supposed to be. And, if we don't disappoint them, maybe, just maybe, they won't disappoint us.
Walt Disney
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.
Walt Disney
The era we are living in today is a dream of coming true.
Walt Disney
The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.
Walt Disney
There is a natural hootchy-kootchy motion to a goldfish.
Walt Disney
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.
Walt Disney
There's nothing funnier than the human animal.
Walt Disney
We allow no geniuses around our Studio.
Walt Disney
We are not trying to entertain the critics. I'll take my chances with the public.
Walt Disney
We believed in our idea - a family park where parents and children could have fun- together.
Walt Disney
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.
Walt Disney
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.
Walt Disney
We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.
Walt Disney
When people laugh at Mickey Mouse, it's because he's so human; and that is the secret of his popularity.
Walt Disney
When we opened Disneyland, a lot of people got the impressions that it was a get-rich-quick thing, but they didn't realize that behind Disneyland was this great organization that I built here at the Studio, and they all got into it and we were doing it because we loved to do it.
Walt Disney
When you're curious, you find lots of interesting things to do.
Walt Disney
Whenever I go on a ride, I'm always thinking of what's wrong with the thing and how it can be improved.
Walt Disney
You can design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make the dream a reality.
Walt Disney
You can dream, create, design and build the most wonderful place in the world, but it requires people to make the dream a reality.
Walt Disney
You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.
Walt Disney
You reach a point where you don't work for money.
Walt Disney
Your dead if you aim only for kids. Adults are only kids grown up, anyway.
Walt Disney
