Walt Disney Quotes

Quotes by and about Walt Disney

(Continued from his main entry on the site.)

[Asked about the secret to his success:]
Disney: "Maybe it's because I can still be amazed at the wonders of the world."

Disney: "Until a character becomes a personality it cannot be believed. Without personality, the character may do funny or interesting things, but unless people are able to identify themselves with the character, its actions will seem unreal. ... Without personality, a story cannot ring true to the audience."

Disney: "I believe in being an innovator."

Disney: "All individuals are different. Some of us just wouldn't be satisfied with just carrying out a routine job."

Disney: "[At my company] we keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things, because we're curious; and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths."

Disney: "When you believe in a thing, believe in it all the way, implicitly and unquestionably."

Disney: "The American child is a highly intelligent human being - characteristically sensitive, humorous, open-minded, eager to learn, and has a strong sense of excitement, energy, and healthy curiosity about the world in which he lives. Lucky indeed is the grown-up who manages to carry these same characteristics into adult life."

[Asked why he kept adding new things to Disneyland:]
Disney: "Disneyland will never be completed as long as there is imagination left in the world."

Disney: "Disneyland is something that will never be finished. It's something that I can keep developing. It will be a live, breathing thing that will need change. A picture is a thing, once you wrap it up and turn it over to Technicolor, you're through. Snow White is a dead issue with me. But I can change the park, because it's alive."

Disney: "You know, I was stumped one day when a little boy asked, 'Do you draw Mickey Mouse?' And I had to admit I do not draw anymore. 'Well, then you think up all the jokes and ideas?' 'No,' I said, 'I don't do that.' Finally, he looked at me and said 'Mr. Disney, just what do you do?' 'Well,' I said, 'sometimes I think of myself as a little bee. I go from one area of the Studio to another and gather pollen, and sort of stimulate everyone. I guess that's the job I do.'"

Neal Gabler: "The most powerful source of his appeal as well as his greatest legacy may be that Walt Disney ... defined the terms of wish fulfillment and demonstrated on a grand scale ... how one could be empowered by fantasy - how one could learn, in effect, to live within one's own illusions and even to transform the world into those illusions. [The song] 'When You Wish Upon a Star' .. was his anthem and guiding principle."

Neal Gabler: "Everyone who knew him remarked on his intensity; when something intrigued him, he focused himself entirely as if it were the only thing that mattered."

Neal Gabler: "No doubt because he worked in what was regarded as a juvenile [medium], and because his films seemed naive, unselfconscious, and unpretentious, the young Walt Disney was regarded in most circles as a kind of folk artist."

Neal Gabler: "Whether in his movies or in his theme parks, Disney always promised a fantasy in which one could exercise the privileges of childhood - privileges he never abandoned in his own life."

Neal Gabler: "He had a facility with quips."

Neal Gabler: "Boyish, enthusiastic, and garrulous, [he] had a way of filling one with enthusiasm too as he described his plans, which he loved to do."

Neal Gabler: "For someone as social as Walt Disney ... loneliness was a curse, and he would [do] anything to avoid it."

Neal Gabler: "Walt, who had very little executive talent or inclination, was never as interested in building an operation or running a business as he was in improving the product."

William Phelps: "He has accomplished something that has defied all the efforts and experiments of the laboratories in zoology and biology: He has given animals souls."