19 Walt Disney Quotes on Art

Walt Disney quotes on art

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

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

22. I do not make films primarily for children. I make them for the child in all of us, whether we 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 at times, is still reaching for the stars.

32. 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.

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

67. Animation is different from other arts. 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.

68. Comedy is fine, but if a story has 'heart', the audience is apt to remember it longer.

75. Fantasia, to me is a whole new opportunity. For my medium it opens up unlimited possibilities. Music has always played a very important part since sound came into the cartoon. Now, the full expression that comes from the new Fantasound opens up a whole new world for us.

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

97. I take great pride in the artistic development of cartoons. Our characters are made to go through emotions which a few short years ago would have seemed impossible to secure with a cartoon character. Some of the action produced in the finished cartoon of today is more graceful than anything possible for a human to do.

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

110. If we are to have a true and honest culture, we must be aware of the self-appointed tyrant who puts a fence around painting or art or music or literature and shouts 'This is my preserve. Think as I do or keep out.'

113. In planning a new picture, we don't think of grownups 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...

138. 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.

142. Since the beginning of mankind, the fable-tellers have not only given us entertainment but a kind of wisdom, humor, and understanding that, like all true art, remains imperishable through the ages.

184. Walt Disney had a saying that he doesn't make movies for children, but he makes movies for the child in all of us. As a film maker I guess that's all you can really do, is make a movie for your own sensibilities.

188. There is a relationship between cartooning and people Miro and Picasso which may not be understood by the cartoonist, but it definitely is related even in the early Disney.

192. 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.

195. He probably did more to heal, or at least soothe troubled human spirits than all the psychiatrists in the world.