While Mickey wasn’t Walt Disney’s first cartoon character—that was Oswald the Lucky Rabbit—he is, in the words of the late innovator, the one who “started” it all. “He popped out of my mind onto a drawing pad 20 years ago on a train ride from Manhattan to Hollywood at a time when the business fortunes of my brother Roy and myself were at lowest ebb, and disaster seemed right around the corner,” the legendary animator wrote in a 1948 essay titled “What Mickey Means to Me.” In honor of Mickey’s birthday, we’re taking a look at the man behind the mouse with the best Walt Disney quotes.
Walt Disney quotes
- “All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.”
- “It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.”
- “When you’re curious, you find lots of interesting things to do.”
- “Laughter is timeless, imagination has no age, dreams are forever.”
- “Togetherness, for me, means teamwork.”
- “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.”
- “The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.”
- “A man should never neglect his family for business.”
- “If you can dream it, you can do it.”
- “The more you like yourself, the less you are like anyone else, which makes you unique.”
- “When you believe in a thing, believe in it all the way, implicitly and unquestionable.”
- “We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.”
- “Laughter is America’s most important export.”
- “Our greatest natural resource is the minds of our children.”
- “First, think. Second, believe. Third, dream. And finally, dare.”
- “You reach a point where you don’t work for money.”
- “I only hope that we never lose sight of one thing—that it was all started by a mouse.”
- “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 believe in being a motivator.”
- “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.”
- “Disneyland will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world.”
- “I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I have ever known.”
- “The difference between winning and losing is most often not quitting.”
- “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.”
- “Whatever you do, do it well.”
- “When people laugh at Mickey Mouse it’s because he’s so human; and that is the secret of his popularity.”
- “Never get bored or cynical. Yesterday is a thing of the past.”
- “That’s the real trouble with the world, too many people grow up. They forget.”
- “Everyone falls down. Getting back up is how you learn how to walk.”
- “Adults are only kids grown up.”
- “It’s a mistake not to give people a chance to learn to depend on themselves while they are young.”
- “We allow no geniuses around our Studio.”
- “I resent the limitations of my own imagination.”
- “In bad times and in good, I’ve never lost my sense of zest for life.”
- “Most of my life I have done what I wanted to do. I have had fun on the job.”
- “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.”
- “I do not like to repeat successes, I like to go on to other things.”
- “I have been up against tough competition all my life. I wouldn’t know how to get along without it.”
- “That’s what we storytellers do. We restore order with imagination. We instill hope again and again and again.”
- “Happiness is a state of mind. It’s just according to the way you look at things.”
- “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.”
- “Get a good idea, and stay with it. Dog it, and work at it until it’s done, and done right.”
- “To the youngsters of today, I say believe in the future, the world is getting better; there still is plenty of opportunity.”
- “Why do we have to grow up? I know more adults who have the children’s approach to life…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.”
- “Every child is born blessed with a vivid imagination.”
- “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.”
- “I do not make films primarily for children. I make them for the child in all of us, whether we be six or sixty.”
- “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 don’t want the public to see the world they live in while they’re in the Park. I want them to feel they’re in another world.”
- “The important thing is the family.”
- “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.”
- “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.”
- “I love the nostalgic myself. I hope we never lose some of the things of the past.”
- “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.”
- “The life and ventures of Mickey Mouse have been closely bound up with my own personal and professional life. . . He still speaks for me and I still speak for him.” Next, 15 animated Disney movies to stream on Disney+!
