Walt Disney Quotes

320 Walt Disney Quotes

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We have found out that they want most to laugh.
Walt Disney

We learned after hard lessons… that the public wants its heroes.
Walt Disney

We learned that the American public loves dance music.
Walt Disney

[On gag films] I was desperate. I mean, I didn’t even like ‘em then, but I had to get [a short movie] out every two weeks.
Walt Disney

I have had a stubborn, blind confidence in the cartoon medium, a determination to show the skeptics that the animated cartoon was deserving of a better place; that is was more than a mere ‘filler’ on a program…
Walt Disney

[On Cartoons] [It] was more than a novelty… it could be one of the greatest mediums of fantasy and entertainment yet developed.
Walt Disney

Those men who have worked closely with me in trying to organize and keep this studio rolling, and keep its chin above water, should not be envied. Frankly those fellows catch plenty of hell…
Walt Disney

You all know that there are always those who try to polish the apple… This is definitely unfair to the conscientious, hard-working individual who is not good at apple-polishing.
Walt Disney

When a fellow shows something, I hear about it; and not through my central source but by a general contact with all the key men in the organization.
Walt Disney

I made up my mind that if this business was ever to get anywhere, if this business was ever to have a chance to grow, it could never do it by having to answer… to someone with only one thought or interest – namely profits…
Walt Disney



I have a blind faith in the policy that quality, tempered with good judgment and showmanship, will win against all odds.
Walt Disney

When I was nine, my brother Roy and I were already businessmen. We had a newspaper route… delivering papers in a residence area every morning and evening of the year, rain, shine, or snow. We got up at 4:30am, worked…
Walt Disney

I have always felt, and always will feel, that the men who are contributing the most to the organization should, out of respect alone, enjoy some privileges…
Walt Disney

The imagination can play more freely with a toy.
Walt Disney

Because the eye is the most sensitive and dependable of our sense organs, the motion picture offers the widest, direct avenue to our emotions. Whereas the still picture can suggest only a fragment of fact or fiction, the cartoon-in-motion is without limit in communicating ideas, events, and human relations.
Walt Disney

The motion picture has become a necessity of life, a part of our balanced existence. It is not a negligible luxury. People are always going to demand and enjoy movies in the theatre. Perhaps not as exclusively as they did when public amusements were more limited. Patronage will depend more than ever upon what we put on the screen. And especially on how well we understand the needs and desires of our younger customers. For their favor we must compete as never before.
Walt Disney

Nothing in a lifetime of picture making has been more exciting and personally satisfactory than delving into the wonders, the mysteries, the magnificent commonplaces of life around us and passing them on via the screen.
Walt Disney

‘Well, in order to crack the field,’ I said, ‘I’ve got to get something a little unique, you see.’ Now, they had the clown out of inkwell who played with live people. So [with the Alice Comedies] I reversed it. I took the live person and put him into the cartoon field. I said, ‘That’s a new twist.’ And it sold. I was surprised myself.
Walt Disney

To captivate our varied and worldwide audience of all ages, the nature and treatment of the fairy tale, the legend, the myth have to be elementary, simple. Good and evil, the antagonists of all the great drama in some guise, must be believably personalized. The moral ideas common to all humanity must be upheld. The victories must not be too easy. Strife to test valor is still and always will be the basic ingredient of the animated tale, as of all screen entertainments.
Walt Disney

Speaking for the one field which I feel definitely qualified to comment on, I fully believe the animated picture will emerge as one of the greatest mediums, not only of entertainment but also of education.
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.
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

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 is different from other [live-action] film. 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 been a necessity, not a luxury. Curiously, it offers us the greatest reassurance about the future in the animation field. Fantasy, when properly done in the one medium best adapted to its nature, need never go stale for the family taste.
Walt Disney

Moviemakers are often too introverted about their production. They tend to build up myths about audiences and to prattle glibly about shifting public taste and its unpredictables. In considering audiences and our professional function, remember on thing: Americans are a sociable folk; we like to enjoy ourselves in crowds, at sports arenas, at picnics, fairs, and carnivals, at concerts, and at the theater. Above all, we like to laugh together – even at our own shortcomings. I don’t like to kid myself about the intelligence and taste of audiences. They are made up of my neighbors, people I know and meet every day. Folks I trade with, go to church with, vote with, compete in business with, help build and preserve a nation with.
Walt Disney

Public taste in amusement has changed very decidedly since the early days when the motion picture was a toy, a novelty; it has changed as much in animation as in live-action cinema offerings.
Walt Disney

Get a good idea and stay with it. Dog it, and work at it until it’s done, and done right.
Walt Disney

Do a good job. You don’t have to worry about the money; it will take care of itself. Just do your best work – then try to trump it.
Walt Disney

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.
Walt Disney



A person should set his goals as early as he can and devote all his energy and talent to getting there. With enough effort, he may achieve it. Or he may find something that is even more rewarding. But in the end, no matter what the outcome, he will know he has been alive.
Walt Disney

All you’re got to do is own up to your ignorance honestly, and you’ll find people who are eager to fill your head with information.
Walt Disney

I suppose my formula might be: dream, diversify, and never miss an angle.
Walt Disney

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

Sometimes I wished that I might have worn skirts myself!
Walt Disney

When you’re curious, you find lots of interesting things to do.
Walt Disney

Do what you do so well they will want to see it again and bring their friends.
Walt Disney

I only hope that we don’t lose sight of one thing – a mouse started it all.
I only hope that we never lose sight of one thing – that it was all started by a mouse.
Walt Disney

I only hope that we don’t lose sight of one thing – a mouse started it all. He popped out of my mind onto a drawing on a train ride from Manhattan to Hollywood at a time when business fortunes of my brother and myself were at their lowest ebb and disaster seemed right around the corner.
Walt Disney

[On Mickey Mouse] Born of necessity, the little fellow literally freed us of immediate worry. He spelled production liberation for us.
Walt Disney



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