Walt Disney never stopped dreaming. Get inspired by his passion and imagination with Walt Disney quotes that still resonate today.
50 Walt Disney Quotes That Will Inspire You to Dream Big
Updated on Apr. 23, 2025
Motivational Disney quotes about following your dreams
1. “All our dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them.”
2. “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.”
3. “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.”
4. “A person should set his goals as early as he can and devote all his energy and talent to getting there.”
5. “I suppose my formula might be: dream, diversity and never miss an angle.”
6. “The era we are living in today is a dream coming true.”
7. “Get a good idea and stay with it. Dog it, and work at it until it’s done, and done right.”
8. “One thing it takes to accomplish something is courage.”
9. “I could never convince the financiers that Disneyland was feasible because dreams offer too little collateral.”
10. “It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.”
11. “When you believe in a thing, believe it all over, implicitly and unquestionably.”
12. “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. ”
Famous Disney quotes about animals and nature
13. “Sometimes we can recognize ourselves in animals. That’s what makes them so interesting.”
14. “Animals have personalities like people and must be studied.”
15. “Next to his own most intimate self-concerns, man is most fascinated by creatures of the animal kingdom. They have been close to his interest and his fate from time beyond the Ark.”
16. “What I have learned from the animal world, and what anyone will learn who studies it, is a renewed sense of kinship with the earth and all its inhabitants.”
17. “In many ways, animals behave just like humans, and the more human they are, the funnier they seem to us and the better we understand them.”
18. “I don’t like formal gardens. I like wild nature. It’s just the wilderness instinct in me, I guess.”
19. “We can learn a lot from nature in action. Each creature must earn his right to live and survive by his own efforts, and the things which in human relations we call moral behavior.”
20. “Ever since the beginning of wisdom, man has been fashioning a brighter light and a stronger glass to help him probe deeper and deeper into the marvels of nature’s secret world. Often, we can’t explain what we see, but just looking is always a dramatic and thrilling experience.”
Walt Disney quotes about optimism and gratitude
21. “Happiness is a state of mind. You can be happy or you can be unhappy. It’s just according to the way you look at things.”
22. “To the youngsters of today, I say believe in the future; the world is getting better; there still is plenty of opportunity.”
23. “The human species, although happily ridiculous at times, is still reaching for the stars.”
24. “I always like to look on the optimistic side of life.”
25. “It’s trial and error. Try out ideas. Throw out the old and search for something better.”
26. “Never get bored or cynical. Yesterday is a thing of the past.”
27. “Why worry? If you’ve done the very best you can, worrying won’t make it any better.”
28. “Disneyland will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world.”
Walt Disney on creativity, work and business
29. “I have been up against tough competition all my life. I wouldn’t know how to get along without it.”
30. “I think it’s important to have a good hard failure when you’re young because it teaches you so much. I learned a lot out of that. Because it makes you kind of aware of what can happen to you.”
31. “Whenever I go on a ride, I’m always thinking of what’s wrong with the thing and how it can be improved.”
32. “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.”
33. “The way to get started was to quit talking and begin doing it.”
34. “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.”
35. “I do not like to repeat successes. I like to go on to other things.”
36. “A man should never neglect his family for business.”
37. “You know I’ve always had a feeling that any time you can kind of experiment or do anything, you ought to do it. You’ll never know what will come of it.”
38. “We evolved by necessity. We did not sit down and say to ourselves, ‘How can we make a big pile of dough?’ It just happened.”
39. “Togetherness, for me, means teamwork.”
40. “All the adversity I’ve had in my life, all the 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.”
41. “Do a good job. You don’t have to worry about the money; it will take care of itself. Just do your best work — then try to trump it.”
Walt Disney quotes about imagination
42. “You never know what will happen. That open mind and that hope that one thing will lead to another.”
43. “Every child is born blessed with a vivid imagination.”
44. “I can never stand still. I must explore and experiment. I am never satisfied with my work. I resent the limitations of my own imagination.”
45. “Animation can explain whatever the mind of man can conceive.”
46. “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.”
47. “I do not make films primarily for children. I make them for the child in all of us, whether we be six or 60.”
48. “I don’t want the public to see the world they live in while they’re in the park (Disneyland). I want them to feel they’re in another world.”
49. “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.”
50. “I only hope that we never lose sight of one thing—that it all started with a mouse.”
Why trust us
At Reader’s Digest, we’ve been sharing our favorite quotes for over 100 years. The sayings and quips that appear in the magazine’s “Quotable Quotes” (formerly “Remarkable Remarks”) are curated from interviews and essays originally published in the magazine, reprints from trusted titles and other verified sources. For this piece on Walt Disney quotes, Robin Raven tapped her experience as a journalist to ensure that all information is accurate. We’ve gone the extra step and had Marcy Lovitch, a fact-checker with 20-plus years of experience researching for national publications including Marie Claire, Good Housekeeping, Family Circle, Glamour, Seventeen, Real Simple, Forbes and InStyle magazines, verify that all quotes are attributed correctly and have credible sourcing. Read more about our team, our contributors and our editorial policies.
