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

A good ending is vital to a picture, the single most important element, because it is what the audience takes with them out of the theater.

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

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.

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.

I don’t make films for children. I make films that children aren’t embarrassed to take their parents to.

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…

I happen to be a kind of inquisitive guy and when I see things I don’t like, I start thinking why do they have to be like this and how can I improve them?

In order to make good in your chosen task, it’s important to have someone you want to do it for. The greatest moments in life are not concerned with selfish achievements but rather with the things we do for people we love and esteem, and whose respect we need.

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…

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.

Of all the things I have done, the most vital is coordinating the talents of those who work for us and pointing them towards a certain goal.

Our greatest natural resource is the minds of our children.

he 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.

Think beyond your lifetime, if you want to do something truly great. Make a fifty-year master plan. A fifty-year master plan will change how you look at the opportunities in the present.