27 Walt Disney Quotes on Business

Walt Disney quotes on business

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

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

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

20. Mickey Mouse is, to me, a symbol of independence. He was a means to an end. 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 business fortunes of my brother Roy and myself were at lowest ebb and disaster seemed right around the corner. 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.

27. 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.

30. 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.

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

61. A man should never neglect his family for business.

70. 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.

71. Disneyland is the star. Everything else is in the supporting role.

72. Everybody thinks that Disneyland is a gold mine - but we have had our problems. You've got to work it and know how to handle it. Even trying to keep the park clean is a tremendous expense. And those sharp-pencil guys tell you, 'Walt, if we cut down on maintenance, we'd save a lot of money.' But I don't believe in that - it's like any other show on the road; it must be kept clean and fresh.

89. I have more latitude in television than I ever had before. If I had an idea for something, I had to then go and try to sell it to the distributors, to the theater men, and everyone else. With television, I just get my gang together and we say we think that will be something interesting - let's do it. And I go direct to that public.

92. 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.

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

95. I remember when we opened... we didn't have enough money to finish the landscaping and I had Bill Evans go out and put the Latin tags on all of the weeds...

104. I've always said that there will never be another Disneyland, and I think it's going to work out that way. But it will be the equivalent of Disneyland. We know the basic things that have family appeal. There are many ways that you can use those certain basic things and give them a new decor, a new treatment. This concept here will have to be something that is unique, so there is a distinction between Disneyland in California and whatever Disney does in Florida.

114. In this volatile business of ours, we can ill afford to rest on our laurels, even to pause in retrospect. Times and conditions change so rapidly that we must keep our aim constantly focused on the future.

119. 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.

121. Money is something I understand only vaguely, and I think about it only when I don't have enough to finance my current enthusiasm, whatever it may be. All I know about money is that I have to have it to do things. I don't want to bank my dividends, I'd rather keep my money working.... Money - or, rather the lack of it to carry out my ideas - may worry me, but it does not excite me. Ideas excite me.

124. My 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 family. But we were able to get it open and in the ten or eleven years now we have been pouring more money back in. In other words, like the old farmer, you have to pour it back into the ground if you want it to grow. That's my brother's philosophy and mine, too.

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.

146. 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.

156. There is a big, exciting period ahead of us, and I say it's television. Television is an open sesame to many things. I don't have to worry about going out and selling the theater man. I mean, I go right to the audience. I have a chance by getting there twenty-six times every year. I have a chance to have a pretty good batting average and not have to get in a rut.

162. To some people, I am a kind of 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, you're bound to get a good average. That's why I keep my projects diversified.

163. To think six years ahead - even two or three - in this business of making animated cartoon features, it takes calculated risk and much more than blind faith in the future of theatrical motion pictures. I see motion pictures as a family-founded institution closely related to the life and labor of millions of people. Entertainment such as our business provides has become a necessity, not a luxury. Curiously, it is the part which offers us the greatest reassurance about the future in the animation field.

174. When they come here they're coming because of an integrity that we've established over the years. And they drive for hundreds of miles. I feel a responsibility to the public.

176. 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... We did it, 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.