Walt Disney Quotes Continued

Walt Disney on Faith

• “Both my study of Scripture and my career in entertaining children have taught me to cherish them. But I don”t believe in playing down to children, either in life or in motion pictures. I didn”t treat my own youngsters like fragile flowers, and I think no parent should.”-Walt Disney
• “In these days of world tensions, when the faith of men is being tested as never before, I am personally thankful that my parents taught me at a very early age to have a strong personal belief and reliance in the power of prayer for Divine inspiration”-Walt Disney
• “My own concept of prayer is not as a plea for special favors nor as a quick palliation for wrongs knowingly committed. A prayer, it seems to me, implies a promise as well as a request; at the highest level, prayer not only is a supplication for strength and guidance, but also becomes an affirmation of life and thus a reverent praise of God.”-Walt Disney
• “Deeds rather than words express my concept of the part religion should play in everyday life.”-Walt Disney

The quotes cited above are from the publication “Faith is a Star”, by Roland Gammon. In 1963 Mr. Gammon asked Walt Disney, along with many other prominent Americans, to share his thoughts on prayer and faith. Walt’s family had many connections to faith. Elias Disney (Walt’s Dad) was a deacon and named Walt after the family minister minister Walter Parr. (St. Paul Congregational Church in Chicago) Walt’s brother Herbert had a daughter named Dorothy and she married a minister, Glenn Puder. It was at Walt”s request that the Reverend Puder delivered the invocation at Disneyland”s grand opening on July 17, 1955.  Represented at the dedication  were Catholic, Jewish and Protestant faiths.

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Walt Disney on Critics, Celebrities and Business

“We are not trying to entertain the critics. I’ll take my chances with the public.”-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

“All cartoon characters and fables must be exaggeration, caricatures. It is the very nature of fantasy and fable.”-Walt Disney

“When you’re curious, you find lots of interesting things to do. And one thing it takes to accomplish something is courage.”-Walt Disney

“I don’t like formal gardens. I like wild nature. It’s just the wilderness instinct in me, I guess.”-Walt Disney

“We allow no geniuses around our Studio.”-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

“I never called my work an ‘art’ It’s part of show business, the business of building entertainment.”-Walt Disney

“I am not influenced by the techniques or fashions of any other motion picture company.”-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

“The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.”-Walt Disney

“Laughter is America’s most important export.”-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

“Why do we have to grow up? I know more adults who have the children’s approach to life. They’re people who don’t give a hang what the Joneses do. You see them at Disneyland every time you go there. They are not afraid to be delighted with simple pleasures, and they have a degree of contentment with what life has brought – sometimes it isn’t much, either.”-Walt Disney

“The era we are living in today is a dream of coming true.”-Walt Disney

“There is more treasure n 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

“You”re dead if you aim only for kids. Adults are only kids grown up, anyway.”-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

“I have been up against tough competition all my life. I wouldn’t know how to get along without it.”-Walt Disney

“Crowded classrooms and half-day sessions are a tragic waste of our greatest national resource – the minds of our children.”-Walt Disney

“You reach a point where you don’t work for money.”-Walt Disney

“Of all of our inventions for mass communication, pictures still speak the most universally understood language.”-Walt Disney

“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.”-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

“A man should never neglect his family for business.”-Walt Disney

“I believe in being a motivator.”-Walt Disney

Walt Disney on Mickey Mouse

“I only hope that we don’t lose sight of one thing – that it was all started by a mouse.”-Walt Disney

“Mickey Mouse is, to me, a symbol of independence. He was a means to an end.”-Walt Disney

“When people laugh at Mickey Mouse, it’s because he’s so human; and that is the secret of his popularity.”

“He 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

“Born of necessity, the little fellow 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

“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.-Walt Disney

“The life and ventures of Mickey Mouse have been closely bound up with my own personal and professional life. It is understandable that I should have sentimental attachment for the little personage who played so big a part in the course of Disney Productions and has been so happily accepted as an amusing friend wherever films are shown around the world. He still speaks for me and I still speak for him.”

Walt Disney 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.” July 17th 1955

“Biggest problem? Well, I’d say it’s been my biggest problem all my life. MONEY. It takes a lot of money to make these dreams come true. From the very start it was a problem. Getting the money to open Disneyland. About seventeen million it took. And we had everything mortgaged including my personal insurance.”-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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“It’s something that will never be finished. Something that I can keep developing…and adding to.” -Walt Disney

“Disneyland will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world.” -Walt Disney

“We believed in our idea – a family park where parents and children could have fun- together.” -Walt Disney

“Disneyland is a work of love. We didn’t go into Disneyland just with the idea of making money.” -Walt Disney

“Disneyland is the star, everything else is in the supporting role.” -Walt Disney

“Disneyland is a show.” -Walt Disney

“It has that thing – the imagination, and the feeling of happy excitement- I knew when I was a kid.” -Walt Disney

Walt Disney 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.”-Walt Disney

“We’ve got to study the land.. . . . .We’ve got to put Disneyland, which everybody will know, at the very upper end of the property because that will be the weenie.”-Walt Disney

“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.”-Walt Disney

“I’m doing this because I want to do it better”-Walt Disney

“Believe me, it’s the most exciting and challenging assignment we have ever tackled at Walt Disney Productions.”-Walt Disney

Walt Disney on E.P.C.O.T.

• “”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.”-Walt Disney
• “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.”-Walt Disney
• “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 will 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.”-Walt Disney

Walt Disney on Fantasia

“Fantasia, to me is a whole new opportunity. For my medium it opens up unlimited possibilities. Music has always played a very important part since sound came into the cartoon. Now, the full expression that comes from the new Fantasound opens up a whole new world for us.”-Walt Disney

“I was doing Sorcerer’s Apprentice with Mickey Mouse and I happened to have dinner on night with Leopold Stokowski. And Stokowski said, ‘Oh, I’d love to conduct that for you.’ … Well, that led to not only doing this one little short subject but it got us involved to where I did all of Fantasia and before I knew it I ended up spending four hundred and some thousand dollars getting music with Stokowski. But we were in then and it was the point of no return. We went ahead and made it.”-Walt Disney

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Walt Disney on Animation

• “Animation offers a medium of storytelling and visual entertainment which can bring pleasure and information to people of all ages everywhere in the world.”-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
• “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
• “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.”-Walt Disney
• “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.”-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
• “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.”-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
• “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. . . it is the part which offers us the greatest reassurance about the future in the animation field.”-Walt Disney
• “I try to build a full personality for each of our cartoon characters – to make them personalities.”-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

Walt Disney on CalArts – (California Institute of the Arts)

“I want people to graduate from there really able to do things. I don’t want a lot of theorists. I want to have a school that turns out people that know all the facts of filmmaking, I want them to be capable of doing anything needed to make a film-photograph it, direct it, design it, animate it, record it, whatever. That’s what I want. Heck, I’ve hired theorists, and they don’t have any knowledge I can use. I want to have everyone in that school come out capable of going in and doing a job. These dilettantes who come out with pseudo-knowledge, they give me a pain. I want it so if an actor is needed, they can get an actor right out of school. If a musician is needed, they can go to the music department and find a musicians who can compose music.”-Walt Disney

“This is the thing I’m going to be remembered for.””

Walt Disney Various

Lillian, Walt Dianne & Sharon Disney 1949

• “I am interested in entertaining people, in bringing pleasure, particularly laughter, to others, rather than being concerned with ‘expressing’ myself with obscure creative impressions.”-Walt Disney
• “We are not trying to entertain the critics. I’ll take my chances with the public.”-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
• “When you’re curious, you find lots of interesting things to do. And one thing it takes to accomplish something is courage.”-Walt Disney
• “I don’t like formal gardens. I like wild nature. It’s just the wilderness instinct in me, I guess.”-Walt Disney
• “Somehow I can’t believe there are any heights that can’t be scaled by a man who knows the secret of making dreams come true. This special secret, it seems to me, can be summarized in four C’s. They are Curiosity, Confidence, Courage, and Constancy and the greatest of these is Confidence. When you believe a thing, believe it all the way, implicitly and unquestionably.”-Walt Disney
• “I never called my work an ‘art’ It’s part of show business, the business of building entertainment.”-Walt Disney
• “I am not influenced by the techniques or fashions of any other motion picture company.”-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
• “The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.”-Walt Disney
• “The era we are living in today is a dream of coming true.”-Walt Disney
• “Tomorrow can be a wonderful age.”-Walt Disney
• “Your dead if you aim only for kids. Adults are only kids grown up, anyway.”-Walt Disney
• “I have been up against tough competition all my life. I wouldn’t know how to get along without it.”-Walt Disney
• “You reach a point where you don’t work for money.”-Walt Disney
• “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.”-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
• “A man should never neglect his family for business.”-Walt Disney
• “When we consider a project, we really study it–not just the surface idea, but everything about it. And when we go into that new project, we believe in it all the way. We have confidence in our ability to do it right. And we work hard to do the best possible job.”-Walt Disney
• “Biggest problem? Well, I’d say it’s been my biggest problem all my life. MONEY. It takes a lot of money to make these dreams come true. From the very start it was a problem. Getting the money to open Disneyland. About seventeen million it took. And we had everything mortgaged including my personal insurance.”-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
• “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
• “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
• “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
• “It’s something that will never be finished. Something that I can keep developing…and adding to.”-Walt Disney
• “Disneyland is a work of love. We didn’t go into Disneyland just with the idea of making money.”-Walt Disney
• “I’m doing this because I want to do it better.”-Walt Disney
• “If you can dream it, you can do it.”-Walt Disney
• “I don’t have depressed moods. I’m happy, just very, very happy.”-Walt Disney