Great Throughts Treasury

"Fancy being remembered around the world for the invention of a mouse!"

"Faith I have, in myself, in humanity, in the worthwhileness of the pursuits in entertainment for the masses. But wide awake, not blind faith, moves me. My operations are based on experience, thoughtful observation and warm fellowship with my neighbors at home and around the world."

"For every laugh, there should be a tear."

"Fantasy and reality often overlap."

"Get a good idea and stay with it. Dog it, and work at it until it's done right."

"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. In this new dimension, whatever it is, nothing corrodes or gets run down at the heel or gets to look ridiculous like, say, the celluloid collar or the bustle."

"Girls bored me - they still do. I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I've ever known."

"First, think. Second, believe. Third, dream. And finally, dream."

"He [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."

"Heigh ho, heigh ho! It's off to work we go."

"Give the public everything you can give them, keep the place as clean as you can keep it, keep it friendly."

"I always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter. With the laugh comes the tears and in developing motion pictures or television shows, you must combine all the facts of life — drama, pathos and humor."

"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 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 am interested in entertaining people, in bringing pleasure, particularly laughter, to others, rather than being concerned with 'expressing' myself with obscure creative impressions."

"I believe firmly in the efficacy of religion, in its powerful influence on a person's whole life. It helps immeasurably to meet the storms and stress of life and keep you attuned to the Divine inspiration. Without inspiration, we would perish."

"I believe in being a motivator."

"I believe that this spiritual and intellectual freedom which we Americans enjoy is our greatest cultural blessing. Therefore, it seems to me, that the first duty of culture is to defend freedom and resist all tyranny."

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

"I can never stand still. I must explore and experiment. I am never satisfied with my work. I resent the limitations of my own imagination."

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

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

"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. The worst of us is not without innocence, although buried deeply it might be. In my work, I try to reach and speak to that innocence, showing it the fun and joy of living; showing it that laughter is healthy; showing it that the human species, although happily ridiculous sometimes, is still reaching for the stars."

"I do not want to make teaching films. If I did, I would create a separate organization. It is not higher education that interests me so much as general mass education."

"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 not just for curing the old ills of old cities. We think 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. It 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."

"I don't make pictures just to make money. I make money to make more pictures."

"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. 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."

"I don't like formal gardens. I like wild nature. It's just the wilderness instinct in me, I guess."

"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 have a great love of animals and laughter."

"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 rocketships - just orange groves, and a few acres of walnut trees."

"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."

"I have long felt that the way to keep children out of trouble is to keep them interested in things. Lecturing to children is no answer to delinquency. Preaching won't keep youngsters out of trouble, but keeping their minds occupied will."

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

"I have more latitude in television than I ever had before. If I had an idea for something, I had to then go and try to sell it to the distributors, to the theater men, and everyone else. With television, I just get my gang together and we say we think that will be something interesting – let’s do it. And I go direct to that public."

"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."

"I just make what I like - warm and human stories, ones about historic characters and events, and about animals. If there is a secret, I guess it's that I never make the pictures too childish, but always try to get in a little satire of adult foibles."

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

"I knew if this business was ever to get anywhere, if this business was ever to grow, it could never do it by having to answer to someone unsympathetic to its possibilities, by having to answer to someone with only one thought or interest, namely profits. For my idea of how to make profits has differed greatly from those who generally control businesses such as ours. I have blind faith in the policy that quality, tempered with good judgment and showmanship, will win against all odds."

"I know different ways of looking at things. I have my stockholders, and I feel a very keen responsibility to the shareholders, but I feel that the main responsibility I have to them is to have the stock appreciate. And you only have it appreciate by reinvesting as much as you can back in the business. And that's what we've done... and that has been my philosophy on running the business."

"I have watched constantly that in our work the highest moral and spiritual standards are upheld, whether my productions deal with fable or with stories of living action."

"I just want it to look like nothing else in the world. And it should be surrounded by a train."

"I love the nostalgic myself. I hope we never lose some of the things of the past."

"I never called my work an 'art' It's part of show business, the business of building entertainment."

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

"I never intended to make art."

"I resent the limitations of my own imagination."

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

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

"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."