Walt Disney Quotes

100+ Inspirational, Insightful and Humorous Quotes from the Walt Disney

As we attempt to be more dynamic and successful human beings, some people may find value in reading through the most inspiring and insightful Walt Disney quotes on life, business, and family. Below we share our list of 100+ Walt Disney quotes to inspire you to be the best version of yourself!

Who was Walt Disney?

Walt Disney (1901-1966) is one of those American business and entertainment icons whom many people admire because of what he achieved during his lifetime. He was an innovator, a media mogul, a film producer, and a founder of the Walt Disney Company, among other accomplishments.

Walter Elias Disney, known as Walt Disney, was born in Chicago on December 5th, 1901, to German, English, and Irish parents. He developed an interest in drawing during childhood and later became a cartoonist for his high school newspaper.

Walt and his brother moved to Hollywood in 1923 and founded an animation studio. With the creation of animated characters like Mickey Mouse and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, the business soon became a success. They produced a number of films and popular cartoon series over the next couple of decades. These include Bambi, Pinocchio, Snow White, and the Seven Dwarfs. Over the course of his lifetime, Walt received 59 Nominations for the Academy Awards (a record) and won 22.

Disneyland and Walt Disney World Resort

Besides animation and film production, Walt Disney began working on an idea for an amusement park in Anaheim, CA. The park – called Disneyland – would open in 1955. After the early success of Disneyland, Walt began acquiring land in Florida for a new theme park to service the East Coast market. Unfortunately, Walt died in 1966 and didn’t live to see the new Florida theme park open. Florida’s Walt Disney World Resort was named after Walt and opened to the public in October 1971.

Walt may be gone, but his influence is still felt strongly. The Walt Disney World Company continues to produce films and maintains theme parks across the globe, and the brand gets stronger every year.

Throughout his professional life, Walt Disney was able to inspire and bring joy to both children and adults, and we are so fortunate that his life was – and continues to be – felt by all!

Now let’s take a look at the best Walt Disney quotes.

100+ Walt Disney Quotes

“When you’re curious, you find lots of interesting things to do.”

“You can design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make the dream a reality.”

“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.”

“We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.”

“All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.”

“It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.”

“Laughter is timeless, imagination has no age, dreams are forever.”

“That’s the real trouble with the world. Too many people grow up.”

“Our greatest natural resource is the minds of our children.”

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

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

“Why worry? If you’ve done the very best you can, then worrying won’t make it any better.”

“If you can dream, you can do it. Always remember that this whole thing was started by a mouse.”

“When you believe in a thing, believe in it all the way, implicitly and unquestionable.”

“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 have no use for people who throw their weight around as celebrities, or for those who fawn over you just because you are famous.”

“Whenever I go on a ride, I’m always thinking of what’s wrong with the thing and how it can be improved.”

“I dream, I test my dreams against my beliefs, I dare to take risks, and I execute my vision to make those dreams come true.”

“I do not like to repeat successes, I like to go on to other things.”

“Money doesn’t excite me, my ideas excite me.”

“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.”

“Ideas come from curiosity.”

“Most of my life I have done what I wanted to do. I have had fun on the job.”

“I am in no sense of the word a great artist, not even a great animator; I have always had men working for me whose skills were greater than my own. I am an idea man.”

“I have never been interested in personal gain or profit. This business and this studio have been my entire life.”

“When I was a kid, a book I read advised young artists to be themselves. That decided it for me. I was a corny kind of guy, so I went in for corn.”

“I don’t make pictures just to make money. I make money to make more pictures.”

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

“I am corny, you know? But I think there are just about 140 million people in this country who are just as corny as I am.”

“I am interested in entertaining people, in bringing pleasure, particularly laughter, to others, rather than being concerned with ‘expressing’ myself with obscure creative impressions.”

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

“I believe in being a motivator.”

“I would rather entertain and hope that people learned something than educate people and hope they were entertained.”

“I wanted to retain my individuality. I was afraid of being hampered by studio policies. I knew if someone else got control, I would be restrained.”

“My greatest reward is that I have been able to build this wonderful organization.”

“I take great pride in the artistic development of cartoons. Our characters are made to go through emotions.”

“We allow no geniuses around our Studio.”

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

“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.”

“Movies can and do have tremendous influence in shaping young lives in the realm of entertainment towards the ideals and objectives of normal adulthood.”

“At first the cartoon medium was just a novelty, but it never really began to hit until we had more than tricks… until we developed personalities. We had to get beyond getting a laugh. They may roll in the aisles, but that doesn’t mean you have a great picture. You have pathos in the thing.”

“I could never convince the financiers that Disneyland was feasible, because dreams offer too little collateral.”

“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.”

“You can dream, create, design and build the most wonderful place in the world, but it requires people to make the dream a reality.”

“Disneyland is a show.”

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

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

“I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I have ever known.”

“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.”

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

“That’s what we storytellers do. We restore order with imagination. We instill hope again and again and again.”

“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. And without personality, a story cannot ring true to the audience.”

“I think you have to know these fellows definitely before you can draw them. When you start to caricature a person, you can’t do it without knowing the person. Take Laurel and Hardy for example; everybody can see Laurel doing certain things because they know Laurel.”

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

“I think a good study of music would be indispensable to the animators — a realization on their part of how primitive music is, how natural it is for people to want to go to music — a study of rhythm, the dance — the various rhythms enter into our lives every day.”

“I try to build a full personality for each of our cartoon characters – to make them personalities.”

“In our animation we must show only the actions and reactions of a character, but we must picture also with the action. . . the feeling of those characters.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“I do not make films primarily for children. I make them for the child in all of us, whether he be six or sixty. Call the child innocence.”

“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.”

“I have long felt that the way to keep children out of trouble is to keep them interested in things.”

“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 Jones’ 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.”

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

“Every child is born blessed with a vivid imagination. But just as a muscle grows flabby with disuse, so the bright imagination of a child pales in later years if he ceases to exercise it.”

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

“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.”

“Children are people, and they should have to reach to learn about things, to understand things, just as adults have to reach if they want to grow in mental stature.”

“Childishness? I think it’s the equivalent of never losing your sense of humor. I mean, there’s a certain something that you retain. It’s the equivalent of not getting so stuffy that you can’t laugh at others.”

“Everyone needs deadlines. Even the beavers. They loaf around all summer, but when they are faced with the winter deadline, they work like fury. If we didn’t have deadlines, we’d stagnate.”

Walt Disney Quotes, Continued…

“People often ask me if I know the secret of success and if I could tell others how to make their dreams come true. My answer is, you do it by working.”

“Whatever you do, do it well.”

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

“Everyone falls down. Getting back up is how you learn how to walk.”

“Never get bored or cynical. Yesterday is a thing of the past.”

“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.”

“First, think. Second, believe. Third, dream. And finally, dare.”

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

“The difference between winning and losing is most often not quitting.”

“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.”

“The more you like yourself, the less you are like anyone else, which makes you unique.”

“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.”

“I always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter.”

“For every laugh, there should be a tear.”

“You can’t just let nature run wild.”

“The important thing is the family. If you can keep the family together — and that’s the backbone of our whole business, catering to families — that’s what we hope to do.”

“There’s nothing funnier than the human animal.”

“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.”

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

“Life is composed of lights and shadows, and we would be untruthful, insincere, and saccharine if we tried to pretend there were no shadows.”

“Laughter is America’s most important export.”

“There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate’s loot on Treasure Island.”

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

“Somehow I can’t believe that there are any heights that can’t be scaled by a man who knows the secrets 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.”

“There is great comfort and inspiration in the feeling of close human relationships and its bearing on our mutual fortunes – a powerful force, to overcome the “tough breaks” which are certain to come to most of us from time to time.”

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

“The worst of us is not without innocence, although buried deeply it might be.”

“Leadership means that a group, large or small, is willing to entrust authority to a person who has shown judgment, wisdom, personal appeal, and proven competence.”

“Fantasy and reality often overlap.”

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

“In bad times and in good, I’ve never lost my sense of zest for life.”

“I resent the limitations of my own imagination.”

“I believe in being an innovator.”

“Times and conditions change so rapidly that we must keep our aim constantly focused on the future.”

“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.”

Thank you for reading our Walt Disney Quotes page!

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