My persistence is the measure of the belief I have in myself.

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.

Every man is captain of his career and there must be cooperation all around if he is to get what he wants out of life.

Everything that matters to we can work out as expected, in the event that we have the strength to seek after them.

Happiness is a state of mind. It’s just according to the way you look at things.

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

Family fun is as necessary to modern living as a kitchen refrigerator.

It’s our America – do something to preserve its’ beauty strength, and natural wealth.

You know, the only way I’ve found to make these pictures is with animators. You can’t seem to do it with accountants and bookkeepers.

I believe that laughter is our greatest export.

There is nothing wrong with good schmaltz, nothing wrong with good heart… The critics think I’m kind of corny. Well, I am corny. As long as people respond to it, I’m okay.

I believe in being a modivator.

Disneyland is a show.

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.

Moving pictures can be and will be new and fresh and exciting as long as there are ideas and talent in the world.

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

In learning the art of storytelling by animation, I have discovered that language has an anatomy.

It is my wish to delight all members of the family, young and old, parent and child.

There’s nothing funnier than the human animal.

Direct and easy communications — freedom of speech in all forms and in its broadest sense — has become vital to the very survival of a civilized humanity.

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

While the worriers are worrying, the planners are planning and the accountants are figuring out why we can’t afford it, I’m busy getting started.

We have always tried to be guided by the basic idea that, in the discovery of knowledge, there is great entertainment – as, conversely, in all good entertainment, there is always some grain of wisdom, humanity, or enlightenment to be gained.

It’s always a challenge bringing a great story classic to the screen. Giving visual form to the characters and places that have only existed in the imagination. But it’s the kind of challenge we enjoy.

My fun is working on a project and solving the problems.

What seems real to the mind can be as important as any material fact. We live by the spirit and the imagination as well as by our senses. Cartoon animation can give fantasy the same reality as those things we can touch and see and hear.

I never intended to make art.

I don’t pose as an authority on anything at all, I follow the opinions of the ordinary people I meet, and I take pride in the close-knit teamwork with my organization.

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 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.

No one person can take credit for the success of a motion picture. It’s strictly a team effort. From the time the story is written to the time the final release print comes off the printer, hundreds of people are involved – each one doing a job – each job contributing to the final product.

The story man must see clearly in his own mind how every piece of business will be put over. He should feel every expression, every reaction. He get far enough from his story to take a second look at it… to see whether there is any dead phase… to see whether the personalities are going to be interesting and appealing to the audience. He should also try to see that the things that his characters are doing are of an interesting nature.

Over at our place, we’re sure of just one thing: everybody in the world was once a child. So in planning a new picture, we don’t think of grown-ups, and we don’t think of children. But just of that fine, clean, unspoiled spot down deep in every one of us, that maybe the world has made us forget.

Money – or rather the lack of it to carry out my ideas – may worry me, but it does not excite me.

To some people, I am kind of a Merlin who takes lots of crazy chances, but rarely makes mistakes. I’ve made some bad ones, but fortunately, the successes have come along fast enough to cover up the mistakes. When you go to bat as many times as I do, and continually improve upon your mistakes, you’re bound to get a good average. That’s why I keep my projects diversified.

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

Now when we opened Disneyland, outer space was Buck Rogers.

Around here, however, we don’t look backwards for very long.

Growing up isn’t simply getting old… Growing up is when you don’t believe anymore.

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.

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

Behind every great amusement park is a great fan site.

If anybody gets highbrow around the studio, out he goes.

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.

When I’m dead I don’t want a funeral. I want people to remember me alive.

It feels good when it helps to get a good seat for a football game. But it never helped me make a good film or a good shot in a polo game, or command the obedience of my daughter.

Perhaps Bach and Beethoven are strange bedfellows for Mickey Mouse, but it’s all been a lot of fun.

There is a natural hootchy-kootchy motion to a goldfish.

I’ve always had a feeling that any time you can experiment, you ought to do it. Because you never know what will happen.

We call it EPCOT, spelled E-P-C-O-T: Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. Here it is in larger scale. EPCOT 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.

We’ve got to fight against bigness. If a school gets too large, you lose an intimacy with the students; they begin to feel they’re just part of a big complex. I don’t think you can create too well in a big plant. That’s why I always tried to avoid bigness in the studio.

Sheer animated fantasy is still my first and deepest production impulse.

To me, today, at age sixty-one, all prayer, by the humble or highly placed, has one thing in common: supplication for strength and inspiration to carry on the best human impulses which should bind us together for a better world.

We seem to know when to ‘tap the heart.’ Others have hit the intellect. We can hit them in all emotional way. Those who appeal to the intellect only appeal to a very limited group. The real thing behind this is: we are in the motion picture business, only we are drawing them instead of photographing them.

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.

Disneyland is not just another amusement park. It’s unique, and I want it kept that way. Besides, you don’t work for a dollar – you work to create and have fun.

Recession doesn’t deserve the right to exist. There are just too many things to be done in science and engineering to be bogged down by temporary economic dislocations.

Being a celebrity doesn’t even seem to keep the fleas off our dogs — and if being a celebrity won’t give me an advantage over a couple of fleas, then I guess there can’t be much in being a celebrity after all.

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.

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.

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.

The same thing could have happened on Halloween if somebody in the neighborhood had jumped out and scared him.

No matter what the provocation, I never fire a man who is honestly trying to deliver a job. Few workers who become established at the Disney Studio ever leave voluntarily or otherwise, and many have been on the payroll all their working lives.

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

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.

I believe in being an innovator.

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

The fun is in always building something. After it’s built, you play with it awhile and then you’re through. You see, we never do the same thing twice around here. We’re always opening up new doors.

In my business of motion pictures and television entertainment, many minds and skillful hands must collaborate… The work seeks to comprehend the spiritual and material needs and yearnings of gregarious humanity.

I don’t have depressed moods. I’m happy, just very, very happy.

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.

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

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

A good concert, if you’re kind of relaxed, it can do something to you. It’s sort of an emotional break you get by listening to music.

Mickey was simply a little personality assigned to the purposes of laughter.

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.

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.

Mickey Mouse is, to me, a symbol of independence. He was a means to an end.

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

Fear too often spells failure.

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.

Disneyland really began when my two daughters were very young. Saturday was always Daddy’s Day and I would take them to the merry-go-round, and sit on a bench eating peanuts while they rode. And sitting there alone, I felt there should be something built, some kind of family park where parents and children could have fun together.

Animals have personalities like people and must be studied.

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

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

I happen to be kind of an inquisitive guy and when I see things I don’t like, I start thinking, why do they have to be like this and how can I improve them?

I definitely feel that we cannot do the fantastic things based on the real, unless we first know the real.

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.

We grew to our present size almost against ourselves. It was not a deliberately planned commercial venture in the sense that I sat down and said that we were going to make ourselves into a huge financial octopus. We evolved by necessity. We did not sit down and say to ourselves, ‘How can we make a big pile of dough?’ It just happened.

Here in Florida, we have something special we never enjoyed at Disneyland: the blessing of size. There’s enough land here to hold all of the ideas and plans we can possibly imagine.

The way I see it, Disneyland will never be finished.

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.

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 of cartoon animation toward new entertainment levels. He spelled production liberation for us.

I’m not the perfectionist anymore. It’s my staff. They’re the ones always insisting on doing something better and better.

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 at times, is still reaching for the stars.

The insignia meant a lot to the men who were fighting … I had to do it … I owed it to them.

In my view, wholesome pleasure, sport, and recreation are as vital to this nation as productive work and should have a large share in the national budget.

All individuals are different. Some of us just wouldn’t be satisfied with just carrying out a routine job and being happy.

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.

It is good to have a failure while you’re young because it teaches you so much. For one thing it makes you aware that such a thing can happen to anybody, and once you’ve lived through the worst, you’re never quite as vulnerable afterward.

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.

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 have a great love of animals and laughter.

When you’re working on a project, make sure at least one person knows what they are doing.

If you can visualize it, if you can dream it, there’s some way to do it.

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

I think it’s important to have a good hard failure when you’re young. I learned a lot out of that. Because it makes you kind of aware of what can happen to you. Because of it I’ve never had any fear in my whole life when we’ve been near collapse and all of that. I’ve never been afraid. I’ve never had the feeling I couldn’t walk out and get a job doing something.

To succeed, work hard, never give up and above all cherish a magnificent obsession.

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

People look at me in many ways. They’ve said, ‘The guy has no regard for money.’ That is not true. I have had regard for money. It depends on who’s saying that. Some people worship money as something you’ve got to have piled up in a big pile somewhere. I’ve only thought about money in one way, and that is to do something with it. I don’t think there’s a thing I own that I will ever get the benefit of except through doing things with it. I don’t even want the dividends from the stock in the studio, because the government’s going to take it away. I’d rather have that in (the company) working.

As the original ‘Mary Poppins’ budget of five million dollars continued to grow, I never saw a sad face around the entire Studio. And this made me nervous. I knew the picture would have to gross 10 million dollars for us to break even. But still there was no negative head-shaking. No prophets of doom. Even Roy was happy. He didn’t even ask me to show the unfinished picture to a banker. The horrible thought struck me – suppose the staff had finally conceded that I knew what I was doing.

Art was always a means to an end with me. You get an idea, and you just can’t wait. Once you’ve started, then you’re in there with the punches flying. There’s plenty of trouble, but you can handle it. You can’t back out. It gets you down once in a while, but it’s exciting. Our whole business is exciting.

If I can’t find a theme, I can’t make a film anyone else will feel. I can’t laugh at intellectual humor. I’m just corny enough to like to have a story hit me over the heart.

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.

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 just want to leave you with this thought, that it’s just been sort of a dress rehearsal, and we’re just getting started. So if any of you start resting on your laurels, I mean just forget it, because… we are just getting started.

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

I don’t pretend to know anything about art. I make pictures for entertainment, and then the professors tell me what they mean.

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.

I’m doing this because I want to do it better.

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 everybody. I guess that’s the job I do.

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

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 an adventurous spirit to blaze new ways, often, in our land of opportunity.

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

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 don’t want to please everybody. I’d get a little worried if I did something and everybody was pleased with it.

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

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

The idea of Disneyland is a simple one. It will be a place for people to find happiness and knowledge.

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.

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

Here is adventure. Here is romance. Here is mystery. Tropical rivers – silently flowing into the unknown. The unbelievable splendor of exotic flowers … the eerie sound of the jungle … with eyes that are always watching. This is Adventureland.

The ideal set-up would be the story man, the director, and the layout man, as well as musician, operating as a sort of story unit. They all should be keenly interested in the picture. No one in person should donate to an extent where he would keep the others from entering into the production and freely expressing themselves.

Always, as you travel, assimilate the sounds and sights of the world.

We’re not trying to entertain the critics … I’ll take my chances with the public.

It is a curious thing that the more the world shrinks because of electronic communications, the more limitless becomes the province of the storytelling entertainer.

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

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 city of tomorrow. We call it EPCOT.

Everyone has to contribute, or they become laborers.

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.

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.

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 great drama in some guise, must be believably personalized. The moral ideals common to all humanity must be upheld. The victories must not be too easy. Strife to test valor is still and will always be the basic ingredient of the animated tale, as of all screen entertainments.

Disneyland would be a world of Americans, past and present, seen through the eyes of my imagination – a place of warmth and nostalgia, of illusion and color and delight.

We don’t make movies to make money, we make money to make more movies.

When I was poor living in a garage in Kansas I began to draw the mice that scampered over my desk. That is how Mickey Mouse was born.

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.

All right. I’m corny. But I think there’s just about a-hundred-and-forty-million people in this country that are just as corny as I am.

Disneyland is the star, everything else is in the supporting role.

The immediate need for education and practice in using our natural resources of soil, forest, water, wildlife and areas of inspirational beauty to the best advantage of all, for this generation and others to come, is again apparent to every observant citizen.

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.

People spend money when and where they feel good.

Main Street, U.S.A. is America at the turn of the century – the crossroads of an era. The gas lamps and the electric lamp – the horse-drawn car and auto car. Main Street is everyone’s hometown – the heart line of America.

We like to have a point of view in our stories, not an obvious moral, but a worthwhile theme. … All we are trying to do is give the public good entertainment. That is all they want.

Money doesn’t excite me – my ideas excite me.

Anything that has the Disney name to it is something we feel responsible for.

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.

You’ll be a poorer person all your life if you don’t know some of the great stories and great poems.

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.

If you act like an adult when you’re a kid you can afford to act like a kid the rest of your life.

I’ve always been bored with just making money. I’ve wanted to do things; I wanted to build things, to get something going. What money meant to me was that I was able to get money to do that for me.

Well it took many years. I started with many ideas, threw them away, started all over again. And eventually it evolved into what you see today at Disneyland.

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

There are fashions in reading, even in thinking. You don’t have to follow them unless you want to. On the other hand, watch out. Don’t stick too closely to your favorite subject. That would keep you from adventuring into other fields. It’s silly to build a wall around your interests.

Disneyland is often called a magic kingdom because it combines fantasy and history, adventure and learning, together with every variety of recreation and fun designed to appeal to everyone.

Actually, if you could see close in my eyes, the American flag is waving in both of them and up my spine is growing this red, white and blue stripe.

Disneyland is like a piece of clay: If there is something I don’t like, I’m not stuck with it. I can reshape and revamp.

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 am a patient listener, but opinionated to the point of stubbornness when my mind is made up.

Every leader is telling a story… about what he or she values.

My business is making people, especially children, happy. I have dedicated much of my time to a study of the problems of children.

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

Fantasy and reality often overlap.

Women are the best judges of anything we turn out. Their taste is very important. They are the theatergoers; they are the ones who drag the men in. If the women like it, to heck with the men.

It seems to me shallow and arrogant for any man in these times to claim he is completely self-made, that he owes all his success to his own unaided efforts. Many hands and hearts and minds generally contribute to anyone’s notable achievements.

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.

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.

I think of a child’s mind as a blank book. During the first years of his life, much will be written on the pages. The quality of that writing will affect his life profoundly.

Do anything better than it was ever done before and you’ll get rich.

To be successful you must be unique, you must be so different that if people want what you have, they must come to you to get it.

Many of the things that seem impossible now will become realities tomorrow.

Ideas come from curiosity.

Always fight for quality, whether giving or receiving.

When we do fantasy, we must not lose sight of reality.

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

Tomorrow can be a wonderful age.

Laughter is no enemy to learning.

Without such inspiration, we would rapidly deteriorate and finally perish.

Happiness is a state of mind. You can be happy or you can be unhappy.

We allow no geniuses around our Studio.

When I started on Disneyland, my wife used to say, “But why do you want to build an amusement park? They’re so dirty.” I told her that was just the point – mine wouldn’t be.

She believed in dreams, all right, but she also believed in doing something about them. When Prince Charming didn’t come along, she went over to the palace and got him.

We’re always exploring and experimenting. We call it Imagineering – the blending of creative and imagination with technical know-how.

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.

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.

My imagination creates my reality.

In most instances, the driving force behind the action is the mood, the personality, the attitude of the character – or all three. Therefore, the mind is the pilot. We think of things before the body does them.

For every laugh, there should be a tear.

The inclination of my life… has been to do things & make things which will give pleasure to people in new and amazing ways.

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. It usually makes for a happy and successful individual.

If I haven’t thought about six impossible things before breakfast, I consider the day wasted.

The wonders of nature are endless.

Disneyland will always be building and growing and adding new things… new ways of having fun, of learning things, and sharing the many exciting adventures which may be experienced here in the company of family and friends.

Landscapes of great wonder and beauty lie under our feet and all around us. They are discovered in tunnels in the ground, the heart of flowers, the hollows of trees, fresh-water ponds, seaweed jungles between tides, and even drops of water. Life in these hidden worlds is more startling in reality than anything we can imagine. How could this earth of ours, which is only a speck in the heavens, have so much variety of life, so many curious and exciting creatures?

Both my study of Scripture and my career in entertaining children have taught me to cherish them.

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.

Why be a governor or senator when you can be king of Disneyland?

I am not interested in what a man can’t do. I want to know what he CAN do.

I function better when things are going badly than when they’re as smooth as whipped cream.

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 think what I want Disneyland to be most of all is a happy place – a place where adults and children can experience together some of the wonders of life, of adventure, and feel better because of it.

Disneyland is like Alice stepping through the Looking Glass; to step through the portals of Disneyland will be like entering another world.

Mickey’s a nice fellow who never does anyone any harm, who gets into scrapes through no fault of his own but always manages to come up grinning.

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.

We believed in our idea – a family park where parents and children could have fun – together.

Here is the world of imagination, hopes, and dreams. In this timeless land of enchantment, the age of chivalry, magic and make-believe are reborn – and fairy tales come true. Fantasyland is dedicated to the young-in-heart, to those who that when you wish upon a star, your dreams come true.

Once a man has tasted freedom he will never be content to be a slave. That is why I believe that this frightfulness we see everywhere today is only temporary. Tomorrow will be better for as long as America keeps alive the ideals of freedom and a better life. All men will want to be free and share our way of life. There must be so much that I should have said, but haven’t. What I will say now is just what most of us are probably thinking every day. I thank God and America for the right to live and raise my family under the flag of tolerance, democracy and freedom.

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.

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

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.

People look at you and me to see what they are supposed to be. And, if we don’t disappoint them, maybe, just maybe, they won’t disappoint us.

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.

We are not influenced by the techniques or fashions of any other company.

Don’t tell me about the problems – I make the problems.

A good story can take you on a fantastic journey.

Part of the Disney success is our ability to create a believable world of dreams that appeals to all age groups. The kind of entertainment we create is meant to appeal to every member of the family.

You don’t build it for yourself. You know what the people want and you build it for them.

There is no magic in magic, it’s all in the details.

Whatever we accomplish is due to the combined effort.

The magic is as wide as a smile and as narrow as a wink, loud as laughter and quiet as a tear, tall as a tale and deep as emotion. So strong, it can lift the spirit. So gentle, it can touch the heart. It is the magic that begins the happily ever after.

Today, we are shapers of the world of tomorrow. That is plain truth. There is no way we can duck the responsibility, and there is no reason why we should.

Most things are good, and they are the strongest things; but there are evil things too, and you are not doing a child a favor by trying to shield him from reality. The important thing is to teach a child that good can always triumph over evil.

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

Think beyond your lifetime, if you want to do something truly great.

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

The greatest moments in life are not concerned with selfish achievements but rather with the things we do for the people we love and esteem, and whose respect we need.

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

We share, to a large extent, one another’s fate. We help create those circumstances which favor or challenge us in meeting our objectives and realizing our dreams.

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

It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.

Worry is a waste of imagination.

Why would I want to be president? I’m the king of Disneyland.

One thing it takes to accomplish something is courage.

We love to entertain kings and queens, but at Disneyland, everyone is a V.I.P.

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

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

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

Life is beautiful. It’s about giving. It’s about family.

Here you leave today and enter the world of yesterday, tomorrow, and fantasy.

Somehow, I can’t believe that there are any heights that can’t be scaled by a man who knows the secret of making dreams come true. The special secret it seems to me is summarized in four C’s. They are Curiosity, Courage, Confidence and Constancy. And the greatest of all is Confidence.

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.

Why worry? If you’ve done the very best you can, worrying won’t make it any better. I worry about many things, but not about water over the dam.

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

There is more treasure in 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.

To all who 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 the hope that it will be a source of joy and inspiration to all the world.

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.

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.

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.

I do not make films primarily for children. I make them for the child in all of us, whether we be six or sixty.

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.

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.

To the youngsters of today, I say “Believe in the future, the world is getting better; there still is plenty of opportunity.” Why, would you believe it, when I was a kid I thought it was already too late for me to make good at anything.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

It’s a mistake not to give people a chance to learn to depend on themselves while they are young.

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

Too many people grow up. That’s the real trouble with the world, too many people grow up. They forget. They don’t remember what it’s like to be 12 years old. They patronize, they treat children as inferiors. Well, I won’t do that.

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

Whatever you do, do it well. Do it so well that when people see you do it they will want to come back and see you do it again and they will want to bring others and show them how well you do what you do.

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.

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

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

I believe in being a motivator.

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 only hope that we never lose sight of one thing — that it was all started by a mouse.

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

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

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

Laughter is America’s most important export.

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

God wisely designed the human body so that we can neither pat our own backs nor kick ourselves too easily. The more you like yourself, the less you are like anyone else, which makes you unique. The problem with most people is that they spend their lives trying to emulate others and so we have lots of copies but few originals.

If you can dream it, you can do it. Always remember that this whole thing was started with a dream and a mouse.

A man should never neglect his family for business.

By nature I’m an experimenter. To this day, I don’t believe in sequels. I can’t follow popular cycles. I have to move on to new things. So with the success of Mickey, I was determined to diversify.

Togetherness, for me, means teamwork. It makes us reflect how completely dependent we are upon one another in our social and commercial life. The more diversified our labors and interests have become in the modern world, the more surely need to integrate our efforts to justify our individual selves and our civilization.

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

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

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

The more you are in a state of gratitude, the more you will attract things to be grateful for.