Walt Disney (1901 – 1966)
American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, and animator.
We're not trying to entertain the critics ... I'll take my chances with the public.
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.
Most family historians agree that Elias's authoritarian and sometimes cruel nature — and propensity for whipping and even beating his young sons — played a role in turning Walt and Roy against the church. The brothers' ambivalent relationship with organized religion is well documented, as is their strong, personal faith in God.
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.
He was a very religious man, but he didn't believe you had to go to church to be religious. ... He respected every religion. There wasn't any that he ever criticized. He wouldn't even tell religious jokes.
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.
Despite the absence of a unifying "story" in Fantasia, there are along the way images and sequences with implications and messages — inspirational and disturbing, subtle and strong, scientific and pagan and Christian — all worth noting.
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 twelve years old. They patronize; they treat children as inferiors. I won't do that. I'll temper a story, yes. But I won't play down, and I won't patronize.
I only hope that we never lose sight of one thing — that it was all started by a mouse.
For every laugh, there should be a tear.
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.
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.
He probably did more to heal, or at least soothe troubled human spirits than all the psychiatrists in the world.
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.
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.
Disneyland is a work of love. We didn't go into Disneyland just with the idea of making money.
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.
When we do fantasy, we must not lose sight of reality.
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.
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 and that maybe our pictures can help recall.