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.

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

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

All your dreams can come true if you have the courage to pursue them.

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

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

You can’t just let nature run wild.

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

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

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.

Or 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.

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

It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.

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

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

Laughter is America’s most important export.

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

Disneyland is a show.

We allow no geniuses around our Studio.

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

A man should never neglect his family for business.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

I believe in being an innovator.

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

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

There’s nothing funnier than the human animal.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

If you can dream it, you can do it.

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.

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

You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.