Powerful Disney Quotes

Who's Chernabog?" Grumbled Maybeck. Philby answered,"Only the most powerful villian Walt Disney ever created.

You little fool. You thought you could defeat the most powerful being on Earth.

I think a lot about queer villains, the problem and pleasure and audacity of them. I know I should have a very specific political response to them. I know, for example, I should be offended by Disney’s lineup of vain, effete ne’er-do-wells (Scar, Jafar), sinister drag queens (Ursula, Cruella de Vil), and constipated, man-hating power dykes (Lady Tremaine, Maleficent). I should be furious at Downton Abbey’s scheming gay butler and Girlfriend’s controlling, lunatic lesbian, and I should be indignant about Rebecca and Strangers on a Train and Laura and The Terror and All About Eve, and every other classic and contemporary foppish, conniving, sissy, cruel, humorless, depraved, evil, insane homosexual on the large and small screen. And yet, while I recognize the problem intellectually—the system of coding, the way villainy and queerness became a kind of shorthand for each other—I cannot help but love these fictional queer villains. I love them for all of their aesthetic lushness and theatrical glee, their fabulousness, their ruthlessness, their power. They’re always by far the most interesting characters on the screen. After all, they live in a world that hates them. They’ve adapted; they’ve learned to conceal themselves. They’ve survived.

I believe in the power of imagination. I believe in the unexplained possibilities of the spirit. And I believe that the heart, like any other muscle, grows stiff if it is not exercised regularly. I believe.

What are you!? A Disney princess?” Ashley’s annoyance powered semi-shout surprised the room. She dropped her knitting to her lap and glared at me, apparently sincerely perturbed by Janie’s revelation. “Get over yourself! We all have to fall in love more than once—even if it’s with the same person.

Few battles are won by strength alone. Cunning and knowing your resources can help you overpower the most powerful.

I believe firmly in the efficacy of religion, in its powerful influence on a person’s whole life. It helps immeasurably to meet the storm and stress of life and keep you attuned to the Divine inspiration. Without inspiration, we would perish.

A few solid pros are more powerful than dozens of cons,” Steve said. “So what should we do next?” Another lesson: Steve was great at weighing all sides of an issue and not allowing negatives to drown out positives, particularly for things he wanted to accomplish. It was a powerful quality of his.

Maybe this is the case for many of us: No matter who we become or what we accomplish, we still feel that we’re essentially the kid we were at some simpler time long ago. Somehow that’s the trick of leadership, too, I think, to hold on to that awareness of yourself even as the world tells you how powerful and important you are. The moment you start to believe it all too much, the moment you look yourself in the mirror and see a title emblazoned on your forehead, you’ve lost your way. That may be the hardest but also the most necessary lesson to keep in mind, that wherever you are along the path, you’re the same person you’ve always been.

A few solid pros are more powerful than dozens of cons,” Steve said.

Whether it was Disney or the Navy, management guys always behaved the same. They never understood the technical issues; and they thought that screaming was the way to make things happen. And maybe it was, if you were shouting at your secretaries to get you a limousine. But screaming didn’t make any difference at all to the problems that Arnold now faced. The computer didn’t care if it was screamed at. The power network didn’t care if it was screamed at. Technical systems were completely indifferent to all this explosive human emotion. If anything, screaming was counterproductive, because Arnold now faced the virtual certainty that Nedry wasn’t coming back, which meant that Arnold himself had to go into the computer code and try and figure out what had gone wrong. It was going to be a painstaking job; he’d need to be calm and careful.

I am a Princess. I am brave sometimes. I am scared sometimes. Sometimes, I am brave even when I am scared. I believe in loyalty and trust. I believe loyalty is built on trust. I try to be kind. I try to be generous. I am kind even when others are not so generous. I am a Princess. I think standing up for myself is important. I think standing up for others is more important. But standing with others is most important. I am a Princess. I believe compassion makes me strong. Kindness is power. And family is the tightest bond of all. I have heard I am beautiful. I know I am strong. I am a Princess. Long may I reign.

And since she wanted to be good, she's always been careful not to care too much about money. Now she wondered if all those Disney movies were merely propaganda to keep poor people content with their lot. 'We may be poor, but we're the salt of the earth, we know what really matters. The rich are perverted by their hideous wealth - why, look at that Cruella de Vil!' But good or evil, even single dollar was power. Power to hire a lawyer, power to control how she spent her time, power to change her appearance, power to command respect. Power to be who she wanted to be.

It’s quite a breathtaking analysis of power that, if nothing else, gives a new spin on Disney movies that have their motherless heroines married off asw teenagers to beasts and strangers and call this a happy ending, while their heroes light off for the territories, love their dogs, have adventures and seldom marry. (91)

WHO OWNS THE MEDIA? Most Americans have very little understanding of the degree to which media ownership in America—what we see, hear, and read—is concentrated in the hands of a few giant corporations. In fact, I suspect that when people look at the hundreds of channels they receive on their cable system, or the many hundreds of magazines they can choose from in a good bookstore, they assume that there is a wide diversity of ownership. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. In 1983 the largest fifty corporations controlled 90 percent of the media. That’s a high level of concentration. Today, as a result of massive mergers and takeovers, six corporations control 90 percent of what we see, hear, and read. This is outrageous, and a real threat to our democracy. Those six corporations are Comcast, News Corp, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner, and CBS. In 2010, the total revenue of these six corporations was $275 billion. In a recent article in Forbes magazine discussing media ownership, the headline appropriately read: “These 15 Billionaires Own America’s News Media Companies.” Exploding technology is transforming the media world, and mergers and takeovers are changing the nature of ownership. Freepress.net is one of the best media watchdog organizations in the country, and has been opposed to the kind of media consolidation that we have seen in recent years. It has put together a very powerful description of what media concentration means.

Maleficent, calling upon the powers of hell.

Never underestimate the power of the next step you are about to take.

Behind the magical name of Disney and the public spaces it represents lurks the power of a multinational conglomerate that has little regard for free speech and public criticism.

saw with razor’s-edge clarity, so plainly that I laughed out loud from the Disney Movie obviousness of it: The greatest power comes from love, from knowing who you are and standing proudly in it.

As the Christian world is celebrating the Nativity once again, the roar of the guns, the cries of the dying and the wails of innocent people are heard on the battlefields. And an even greater holocaust threatens. Twice before in our time we have seen tyranny and lust for power thwarted by those who believe in the freedom of all mankind, only to see them circumvented in a brief few years. In America, we have only one thought at this Christmastime, to pray that the world again be restored to a sanity that will insure all peoples the right to think and live as they choose, to respect the beliefs of all and to help humanity live a better life in the short span allotted to us on this earth. In this aim we feel we are joined by all peoples who believe in the Divine Spirit. It is my sincere wish, in which I know I am joined by 150,000,000 other Americans, that we will be guided by the Supreme Being in restoring peace to the world, that all may live in hope and happiness.To all peoples of good will, I extend greetings of the Season.

THE FAIR HAD A POWERFUL and lasting impact on the nation’s psyche, in ways both large and small. Walt Disney’s father, Elias, helped build the White City; Walt’s Magic Kingdom may well be a descendant. Certainly the fair made a powerful impression on the Disney family. It proved such a financial boon that when the family’s third son was born that year, Elias in gratitude wanted to name him Columbus. His wife, Flora, intervened; the baby became Roy. Walt came next, on December 5, 1901. The writer L. Frank Baum and his artist-partner William Wallace Denslow visited the fair; its grandeur informed their creation of Oz. The Japanese temple on the Wooded Island charmed Frank Lloyd Wright, and may have influenced the evolution of his “Prairie” residential designs. The fair prompted President Harrison to designate October 12 a national holiday, Columbus Day, which today serves to anchor a few thousand parades and a three-day weekend. Every carnival since 1893 has included a Midway and a Ferris Wheel, and every grocery store contains products born at the exposition. Shredded Wheat did survive. Every house has scores of incandescent bulbs powered by alternating current, both of which first proved themselves worthy of large-scale use at the fair; and nearly every town of any size has its little bit of ancient Rome, some beloved and be-columned bank, library or post office. Covered with graffiti, perhaps, or even an ill-conceived coat of paint, but underneath it all the glow of the White City persists. Even the Lincoln Memorial in Washington can trace its heritage to the fair.

His life would become an ongoing effort to devise what psychologists call a “paracosm,” an invented universe, that he could control as he could not control reality. From Mickey Mouse through Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs through Disneyland through EPCOT, he kept attempting to remake the world in the image of his own imagination, to certify his place as a force in that world and keep reality from encroaching upon it, to recapture a sense of childhood power that he either had never felt or had lost long ago.

Creativity, I believe, is inherent in all of us. We are the progeny of almighty God. God is defined in many ways: all-powerful, all-wise, and all-seeing; everlasting; the lawgiver; the ultimate source of love, beauty, justice, and happiness. Most of all, he is the creator. He created the universe, and those who inhabit it; and, in creating us, he made us in his own image, so that his personality and capacities, however feebly, are reflected in our minds, bodies, and immortal spirits. So we are, by our nature, creators as well.

If we put aside the hatred, intolerance and bigotry this was a truly magical and enchanting era. You see how even Arabic Genies are very like ours. Ours live in a bottle or a lamp and by rubbing the lamp we allow the Genie to escape, for which he grants us three wishes – the biggest castle, the most beautiful princess and an unlimited amount of gold are usually favourites. But unlike the giant, blue-skinned, muscular Genies westerners are familiar with through Disney films, the Arabic Djinni are often invisible, although they have the power to shape-shift to just about any form they like, even human. Many people still believe they are with us today, although mostly living in deserts, mountains and caves. Many western soldiers have reported seeing them on night exercises in the Middle East.

I start to run down the hill, but did I mention I can’t feel my feet? They slip out from under me. I tumble head over heels, down, down, down until I splash into a stream. The icy water soaks through my clothes and bites into my skin. Why couldn’t Elsa have had warm magical powers?

Vader was not a victim of unfortunate circumstances. Yes, he had his struggles and his shortcomings, but he was not a weak being who feared abandonment. He was a powerful man who had been given opportunities to better himself, yet he only craved more power, and chose his own path to betray the Jedi and become a Sith. He was my greatest failure.

That was not all. When the Jamaican government wanted to buy the country’s oil refinery from an Exxon subsidiary, Marc Rich + Co lent it the money. The trading company even helped to fund Jamaica’s team at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, and paid for it to send a bobsled team to participate in the 1988 Winter Olympics – whose unlikely journey to the Games was chronicled in the Disney film Cool Runnings.15

Rob tries to help and uses his hand to apply direct pressure to his face to stop bleeding. Sergeant Funches is dismayed to see Disney’s hand disappear into his face. Rob’s facial nerves are not working, and he can’t feel what’s going on. Funches removes Disney’s hand, repositions the flap of hanging face to its correct anatomical alignment, and places Sergeant Disney’s own hand on the best spot to apply pressure and stop the bleeding.

Walt Disney bought some orange groves in the middle of Florida and built a tourist town on them. No magic there of any kind, although I think there might be something real in the original Disneyland. There may be some power there, although twisted, and hard to access. There’s definitely nothing out of the ordinary about Disney World. But some parts of Florida are filled with real magic. You just have to keep your eyes open. Ah, for the mermaids of Weeki Wachee…Follow me, this way.

wealth and power are shifting to those who control the platforms on which all of us create, consume, and connect. The companies that provide these and related services are quickly becoming the Disneys of the digital world—monoliths hungry for quarterly profits, answerable to their shareholders not us, their users, and more influential, more ubiquitous, and more insinuated into the fabric of our everyday lives than Mickey Mouse ever was. As such they pose a whole new set of challenges to the health of our culture.

He thinks he can adapt, he’ll just shoot between the two flashes. But it’s hard to focus and it feels like something is pulling on his eyeball. It’s his hanging, face-stretching muscles connected to his eye. He yells out, “I’m hit!” Sergeant Funches quickly yells, “Shoot back!” Sergeant Funches watches Rob Disney raise his rifle to return fire. The butt of the weapon disappears into the bloody hole that is the right side of his face. Later it will take Ross Funches hours to clean the blood and flesh from Rob’s rifle.

the only thing the hero knows about the girl is that she is beautiful. He shows no interest in her intellect or personality—or even her sexuality. The man is either a ruler or has the magic power to awaken her, and all she can do is hope that her physical appearance fits the specifications better than the other girls. In the original Cinderella story, the stepsisters actually cut off parts of their feet to try to fit into the glass slipper. Maybe this marks the origins of the first cosmetic surgery. Besides romanticizing Cinderella’s misery, the story also gives the message that women’s relationships with each other are full of bitter competition and animosity. The adult voice of womanly wisdom in the story, the stepmother, advises all her girls to frantically do whatever it takes to please the prince. This includes groveling, cutting off parts of themselves, and staying powerless. I was heartsick to watch Disney’s “The Little Mermaid” with my three-year-old daughter. The little mermaid agrees to give up her voice for a chance to go up on the “surface” and convince her nobleman to marry her. She is told by her local matron sea witch that she doesn’t need a voice—she needs only to look cute and get him to kiss her. And in the story, it works. These are the means to her one and only end: to buy a rich and respected guy. Women are taught to only listen to an outside patriarchal authority. No wonder there is so much self-doubt and confusion when faced with the question, “What do you want out of your life?” This question alone can be enough to trigger an episode of depression. It often triggers a game of Ping-Pong in a woman’s head. Her imagination throws up a possibility and then her pessimistic shotgun mind shoots it down. The dialog may look something like this: “Maybe I want to go back to school.... No, that would be selfish of me because the kids need me…. Maybe I’ll start a business.... No I hate all that dogeat-dog competition…. Maybe I’ll look for a love relationship…. No, I am not sure I am healed ye….” and on it goes.

While he’s examining them he glances over at Sergeant Disney who is lying on the deck with his feet propped-up on a bench. Then, Rob struggles to his feet and immediately lies back down—over and over again. What is happening is that he feels better with his feet propped up on the bench, higher than his heart. Gravity helps force the life-giving fluids into his body’s core and brain. The IV fluids along with his elevated feet counteract the shock brought on by his blood loss. As soon as he starts to feel better his instinct to help others kicks in and he tries to get up and assist his wounded friends. But as soon as he gets up, blood drains away from his brain, the shock returns, the world begins to spin and he nearly passes out. Sergeant Disney’s instinct for self-preservation reasserts itself and he quickly lies down and puts his feet back up on the bench. Soon he begins to feel better, and once again rises, only to be forced back down by dizziness. Funches yells at Disney to stay down, but Rob’s up and down antics continue until Ross returns to his side. As the helicopter speeds through the air, Disney briefly passes out. When Sergeant Funches glances over to check on him, his eyes are closed and he appears to be dead. Sergeant Funches goes ballistic and immediately screams at Disney. Sergeant Disney is abruptly startled awake.

Now, let me preface this story with the following: If you think that I am in any way endorsing cultural appropriation by writing this, you should just stop reading. I swear to Goddess,* if I hear about any one of you reading this passage and deciding, “Okay, yeah, great, the moral of this story is that Jacob thinks it’s awesome for white people to dress up as Native Americans for Halloween, so I’m gonna go do that,” I will use the power of the internet to find out where you live and throw so many eggs at your house that it becomes a giant omelet. Or if you’re vegan, I will throw so much tofu at your house that it becomes a giant tofu scramble. The point of this passage is not that white people should dress their children as Native Americans for Halloween. That’s basically the opposite of the point here. Capisce? All that being said, it was 1997. I was six years old and hadn’t quite developed my political consciousness about cultural appropriation or the colonization of the Americas and subsequent genocide of Native American people at the hands of white settlers yet. I also didn’t know multiplication, so I had some stuff to work on. What I did know was that Pocahontas was, by far, the most badass Disney princess. Keep in mind that Disney’s transgender-butch-lesbian masterpiece Mulan wasn’t released until a year later, or else I would’ve obviously gone with that (equally problematic) costume.

Any kind of cultural change comes slowly, and the powerful transformation to be fueled by adoption of the Dream principle is no exception. If your company is large and if old attitudes and methods are firmly entrenched, it may take three to five years for the new culture to take permanent root. However, we have worked with organizations that began realizing improvements in service and productivity within a few months.

Once the last guest is gone, maintenance crews descend on each attraction. The crews perform inspections of ride vehicles and tracks based upon Disney’s daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly maintenance checklist. They look for wear and potential mechanical problems. The ride engineers and maintenance workers perform their tasks, and by the end of their shift, just mere hours before thousands descend on the parks again, the attractions are powered up and run through their paces again before any guests can climb aboard. All of this preventive and corrective maintenance equates to roughly one thousand daily hours of inspection time, on all attractions.

What I had to deal with taught me that it's not the role which makes a person important." "It's not the power!" "The real master is the one who realizes and understands... that he is always a pupil , and always has something new to learn.

On our way, a man dressed in spandex running clothes stopped Bernie in the street. “Senator Sanders, Jeff Katzenberg, nice to meet you.” “Good to meet you too.” Bernie just strolled on. Katzenberg, the former Disney chairman and DreamWorks CEO, looked stunned. As we continued up the block, I turned to Bernie and said, “Do you know who that was?” “He said his name was Jeff, right?” “Senator, that was Jeff Katzenberg, one of the most powerful media executives in the world and one of the biggest Democratic Party donors.” Bernie didn’t even bother with a response. Most Democratic politicians are desperate to secure meetings with people like Jeff Katzenberg. For Bernie, Katzenberg didn’t matter—it was as though his mind couldn’t process the idea of his supposed importance or relevance. Bernie would have been more likely to stop for a teacher, a nurse, or a mechanic.

In order to attain knowledge, which is a form of power, we cannot continue to endorse, with blinded vision and stilted jargon, the initiation rituals with which our spiritual high priests seek to legitimize and protect their exclusive privileges of thought and expression.

What is truly interesting is not the fact that people have power, but how they use that power. Do they make their world better, stronger, gentler, more varied, more interesting, more humane?

All that time she bad allowed herself to be wrapped up in fear - fear of being alone, fear of never finding Anna, fear of destroying the kingdom with her powers, That fear had held her prisoner since she had learned she had magic inside her. It was just as Grand Pabbie had said: she needed to learn to control her magic. If only she embraced the beauty in her life and the magic she'd been gifted - gifted not cursed with-then she could move mountains. Or at least thaw out he countryside.

the most powerful source of his appeal as well as his greatest legacy may be that Walt Disney, more than any other American artist, defined the terms of wish fulfillment and demonstrated on a grand scale to his fellow Americans, and ultimately to the entire world, how one could be empowered by fantasy—how one could learn, in effect, to live within one’s own illusions and even to transform the world into those illusions.

Steve Jobs strolls into the Apple break room one day in 1994 and starts making himself a bagel. The staff chew warily. Suddenly, Jobs addresses the room: “Who is the most powerful person in the world?” Silence. A few names are proposed. Bill Clinton? Nelson Mandela? Then, Jobs erupts: “NO! You are ALL wrong. The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller. The storyteller sets the vision, values and agenda of an entire generation that is to come and Disney has a monopoly on the storyteller business.” He continues: “You know what? I am tired of that bullshit, I am going to be the next storyteller” And out he walks with his bagel I found this on Quora – another great website for building up your swipe file.

Story 8: Steve Jobs Steve Jobs strolls into the employee break room one day in 1994 and starts making himself a bagel. The staff chew warily. Suddenly, Jobs addresses everybody: “Who is the most powerful person in the world?” Silence. A few names are proposed. Bill Clinton? Nelson Mandela? Then, Jobs erupts: “NO! You are ALL wrong. The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller. The storyteller sets the vision, values and agenda of an entire generation that is to come and Disney has a monopoly on the storyteller business.” He continues: “You know what? I am tired of that bullshit, I am going to be the next storyteller” And out he walks with his bagel. How to use this story I found this encounter in a thread on Quora.com. It’s a lovely scene that really engages an audience. You could use it get people hooked on storytelling. The fact that Steve Jobs held it in such regard helps people to recognise its importance.

The first known published text of the classic fairy tale "Beauty and the Beast" was written by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve in 1740 and collected in her compilation La Jeune Américaine et les contes marins. To say that the story met with favor is an understatement. By 1756, "Beauty and the Beast" was so well known that Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont wrote an abridged edition of it that would become the popular version included in collections of fairy tales throughout the nineteenth century (although Andrew Lang went back to de Villeneuve's original for his groundbreaking anthology The Blue Fairy Book, first published in 1891 as the beginning of a twelve-book series that would revolutionize the anthologizing of fairy tales for young read ers). Fifteen years later. Jean-François Marmontel and André Ernest Modeste Grétry adapted de Villeneuve's story as the book for the opera Zémire et Azor. the start of more than two centuries of extraliterary treatments that now include Jean Cocteau's famous 1946 film La Belle et la Bête, Walt Disney's 1991 animated feature Beauty and the Beast, and countless other cinematic, televi sion, stage, and musical variations on the story's theme. More than 4,000 years after it became part of the oral storytelling tradi tion, it is easy to understand why "Beauty and the Beast" continues to be one of the most popular fairy tales of all time, and a seemingly inexhaustible source of inspiration for artists working in all mediums. Its theme of the power of unconditional love is one that never grows old.

Let the Force guide you. Let it flow through you as it flows through me. Use that power, and your instincts, for they are one and the same.

Twitter was a potentially powerful platform for us, but I couldn’t get past the challenges that would come with it. The challenges and controversies were almost too much to list, but they included how to manage hate speech, and making fraught decisions regarding freedom of speech, what to do about fake accounts algorithmically spewing out political “messaging” to influence elections, and the general rage and lack of civility that was sometimes evident on the platform. Those would become our problems. They were so unlike any we’d encountered, and I felt they would be corrosive to the Disney brand. On the Sunday after the board had just given me the go-ahead to pursue the acquisition of Twitter, I sent a note to all of the members telling them I had “cold feet,” and explaining my reasoning for withdrawing. Then I called Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s CEO, who was also a member of the Disney board. Jack was stunned, but very polite. I wished Jack luck, and I hung up feeling relieved.

It's such a unique experience to take your grandchild to Disneyland. You're not doing it that often. And there are lots of people in the country. And Disney found that it could raise those prices a lot, and the attendance stayed right up.So a lot of the great record of Eisner and Wells was utter brilliance but the rest came from just raising prices at Disneyland and Disneyworld and through video cassette sales of classic animated movies. At Berkshire Hathaway, Warren and I raised the prices of See's Candy a little faster than others might have. And, of course, we invested in Coca- Cola-which had some untapped pricing power.

The TV was still on, but now they were watching Moana. The princesses had definitely gotten more badass since she was a little girl.

On the shuttle, Darth Vader peered through a window at the monstrous assemblage. He thought, Even if it succeeds where the previous Death Star failed, it is an infant’s trinket compared to the power of the Force.

The smelting droid lowered the branding irons again on the upside-down power droid’s feet, and again the power droid screeched. R2-D2, who’d visited many inhospitable places in his long lifetime, decided that Jabba’s palace was the absolute worst.

Size matters not,” Yoda said. “Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you? Mm?” Luke shook his head. “Mmmm,” Yoda murmured. “And well you should not. For my ally is the Force. And a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we…” He pinched Luke’s shoulder. “…not this crude matter.

If only you knew the power of the dark side,” Vader said, reaching out to clutch the air with his black-gloved fist. “Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your father.” “He told me enough!” Luke said as he wrapped his arms around the sensor array and lowered his feet to a metal ring. Wincing, he added, “He told me you killed him.” “No,” Vader said, his fist still clenched. “I am your father.” Luke’s eyes went wide. My father? But Ben told me… “No,” Luke whimpered. “No. That’s not true! That’s impossible!” “Search your feelings,” Vader said. “You know it to be true.” “No!” Luke shouted. “No!

I am to fate or God or the Universe or Walt-fucking-Disney—whoever’s up there pulling the strings—that Fee stomped into my life, as inconvenient and powerful as the storm that same day.

He saw firsthand the way that the Disney people took advantage of the open floor plan, sharing information and brainstorming. Steve was a big believer in the power of accidental mingling; he knew that creativity was not a solitary endeavor.

The next step is to create a three- to four-word mantra that explains the meaning that your startup is seeking to make. For startups, the definition of “mantra” from the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language is perfect: A sacred verbal formula repeated in prayer, meditation, or incantation, such as an invocation of a god, a magic spell, or a syllable or portion of scripture containing mystical potentialities. Here are five examples (some hypothetical) that illustrate the power of a good mantra to communicate the meaning of organizations: Authentic athletic performance (Nike)* Fun family entertainment (Disney)* Rewarding everyday moments (Starbucks)* Democratize commerce (eBay)

In the 1960s, however, the empire of production began to come undone. Within another twenty years—thanks to permanently negative trade balances, a crushing defeat in Vietnam, oil shocks, “stagflation,” and the shredding of a moral consensus that could not withstand the successive assaults of Elvis Presley, “the pill,” and the counterculture, along with news reports that God had died—it had become defunct. In its place, according to Maier, there emerged a new “Empire of Consumption.” Just as the lunch-bucket-toting factory worker had symbolized the empire of production during its heyday, the teenager, daddy’s credit card in her blue jeans and headed to the mall, now emerged as the empire of consumption’s emblematic figure. The evil genius of the empire of production was Henry Ford. In the empire of consumption, Ford’s counterpart was Walt Disney.

David Kord Murray, a former rocket scientist42 who worked on projects for NASA and later became the head of innovation at Intuit, made a study of connective creativity in his book Borrowing Brilliance. According to Murray, “The nature of innovation [is that] we build new ideas out of existing ideas.” Murray cites Einstein, Walt Disney, George Lucas, and Steve Jobs as prime examples of innovators who “defined problems, borrowed ideas, and then made new combinations.

The Young & Rubicam analysis explored changes in EVA and MVA from 1993 to 1999 for a set of 50 well-known and highly regarded brands, such as American Express, American Greetings, Fruit of the Loom, Disney, Kodak, Sears, Heinz, Harley-Davidson, and The Gap. The relationship of changes in these fundamental financial indicators was profiled among two sets of brands: those with “tightly defined” archetypal identities, whose closest secondary relationship was 10% or more below the first, and a “confused” set of brands, whose secondary archetype was within this 10% boundary. Each set consisted of an equal number of brands. The analysis showed that the MVA of those brands strongly aligned with a single archetype rose by 97% more than the MVA of confused brands. Also, over the six-year period under study, the EVA of strongly aligned brands grew at a rate 66% greater than that of the EVA of weakly aligned brands.

Disneyland was one perfect answer. It provided, an almost sacred space where it is permissible and safe to let one's guard down, take a risk, rediscover imagination, have fun, express emotion, play and deepen family ties. This is powerful stuff even today, in our nation of workaholics and two-working-parent households, and it was certainly powerful in the anxious 1950's.

The DCA Tower of Terror is a powerful visual landmark that looms over the park day and night. It's not just the tallest building at Disneyland Resort; it's the tallest building in Anaheim. Amtrak travelers know they're approaching the Anaheim train station when they see the Tower of Terror looming in the distance.

He would explain that Disney began work on EPCOT on Day One. They put in the vacuum-powered trash system. “That’s EPCOT,” he’d say.

A provision of the Reedy Creek Improvement District also allowed Disney to build and operate its own on-site nuclear power plant.

Stories are powerful because they speak to both our reason and to our emotion.

Five standard years have passed since Darth Sidious proclaimed himself galactic Emperor. The brutal Clone Wars are a memory, and the Emperor’s apprentice, Darth Vader, has succeeded in hunting down most of the Jedi who survived dreaded Order 66. On Coruscant a servile Senate applauds the Emperor’s every decree, and the populations of the Core Worlds bask in a sense of renewed prosperity. In the Outer Rim, meanwhile, the myriad species of former Separatist worlds find themselves no better off than they were before the civil war. Stripped of weaponry and resources, they have been left to fend for themselves in an Empire that has largely turned its back on them. Where resentment has boiled over into acts of sedition, the Empire has been quick to mete out punishment. But as confident as he is in his own and Vader’s dark side powers, the Emperor understands that only a supreme military, overseen by a commander with the will to be as merciless as he is, can secure an Empire that will endure for a thousand generations …

Although Palpatine had always presented himself as a cautious, unassuming politician, he made it known to all that he would do whatever was necessary to preserve the Republic. Despite his modest protests, the Senate demanded that he stay in office long after his term had expired. But as the Clone Wars escalated, even his most trusted advisors were surprised by his many amendments to the Republic Constitution, which extended his own political powers while limiting the freedom of others.

It was determined that the freighter had traveled to Yavin 4, the same moon where Anakin Skywalker had dueled Asajj Ventress during the Clone Wars. First Tatooine, now Yavin 4, Vader thought. Despite his devotion to the power of the dark side of the Force, he had the nagging sense that his past was coming back to haunt him.

But for all of Anakin’s confidence in his powers, all his accomplishments and victories, and all the lessons learned in the decade that followed the Battle of Naboo, nothing prepared him, at age twenty, for his reunion with Padmé Amidala.

At some point, while listening to spacers talk of faraway worlds, he became aware of the Jedi Knights, the powerful peacekeepers of the Galactic Republic, who used lightsabers: a handheld weapon that emitted a lethal, truncated laser beam. Despite his limited knowledge of the Jedi, he sometimes had dreams of becoming one.

That word “unreasonable” was meant to shut us down—to end the conversation, as it so often does. Instead, it started one, and became our call to arms. Because no one who ever changed the game did so by being reasonable. Serena Williams. Walt Disney. Steve Jobs. Martin Scorsese. Prince. Look across every discipline, in every arena—sports, entertainment, design, technology, finance—you need to be unreasonable to see a world that doesn’t yet exist.

He goes on and describes this as a ‘royal marriage’, in a dramatic picture which is worthy of any Disney movie: Here this rich and divine bridegroom Christ marries this poor, wicked harlot, redeems her from all her evil, and adorns her with all his goodness. Her sins cannot now destroy her, since they are laid upon Christ and swallowed up by him. And she has that righteousness in Christ, her husband, of which she may boast as of her own and which she can confidently display alongside her sins in the face of death and hell and say, ‘If I have sinned, yet my Christ, in whom I believe, has not sinned, and all his is mine and all mine is his.’41 So the gospel is a romance. A hopeless, sinful slave marries the beautiful, powerful Lord.

For a young man who had chafed within the stern, moralistic, anhedonic world of his father, animation provided escape, and for someone who had always been subjugated by that father, it provided absolute control. In animation Walt Disney had a world of his own. In animation Walt Disney could be the power.

How much the clubs were responsible for propelling Mickey and how much Mickey was responsible for propelling the clubs is difficult to determine, but the promotion took off immediately and kept growing, giving theaters revenue from Saturday matinees, parents a three-hour respite from their children, the film industry a beacon of wholesomeness to which they could point to deflect critics, and Walt Disney a powerful means of promoting his creation and himself.

One of the desks was practically a shrine to Tinker Bell, decorated with a half dozen ceramic representations of the world’s most famous pixie. I paused, looking at a figurine of the little blonde bitch posed coyly atop a thimble. Every changeling in the world would love to shove her into a microwave, but Disney, alas, is more powerful than most of us could ever hope to

The brains of the rats that lived in the Disney World cages were quantifiably bigger and more developed in various areas, including visual cortex, motor cortex, and somatosensory cortex. This was the first demonstration that an adult brain had the capacity to change, which we now refer to as adult brain plasticity.

More importantly, all of the Disney experience is a result of powerful two-way conversations. Disney asks in ways that invite high response rates, it listens, and then it engages in highly relevant, highly contextual, highly personalized ways that meet needs and delights customers.

The city had never been more corrupt, with local government by fiat and the threat of political violence never far away, and, strangely, it had never been more relevant. Under the watchful eye of Pendergast, Walt Disney opened Laugh-O-Gram Studios near Thirty-First and Troost Avenue. Cub reporter Ernest Hemingway wrote short, declarative sentences at The Kansas City Star (abiding by the paper’s house style). Nell Donnelly popularized gingham for American mothers and built a fashion empire. Baseball stars Paige and O’Neil turned the Kansas City Monarchs into a Negro Leagues powerhouse. Homer B. Roberts invested profits to open another car dealership in Chicago. Even Pendergast’s detractors fed off his power. During his reign, local boosters were crazy enough to talk about Kansas City becoming a city of one million people, more than double its size. It still felt like the city could turn into something great, following the trajectory of the many jazz musicians who passed through. Basie stuck around for nine years. Kansas City, in his eyes, was “a cracker town but a happy town.

On the stairway behind Luke, the Emperor was unable to contain himself. “Good! Your hate has made you powerful. Now, fulfill your destiny and take your father’s place at my side!

And then, in a moment, something changed. Perhaps he remembered something heard in his youth a long time ago: an ancient prophecy of the Chosen One who would bring balance to the Force. Perhaps the vague outlines of someone named Shmi and a Jedi named Qui-Gon struggled to the surface of his consciousness. The most powerful, the most repressed thought of all could have emerged from the darkness: Padmé…and her undying love for someone he once knew well. And despite all the terrible, unspeakable things he’d done in his life, he suddenly realized he could not stand by and allow the Emperor to kill their son. And in that moment, he was no longer Darth Vader. He was Anakin Skywalker.

Darth Vader ignored the blasterfight and looked down at the old brown cloak and lightsaber that lay on the floor. Incredibly, Obi-Wan had completely disappeared. Where is he? How could he vanish? What sort of trickery is this? He had assumed Obi-Wan’s study of the Force had ended long ago, and that his powers had diminished over time. But Vader was wrong.

Vader said, “Your powers are weak, old man.” “You can’t win, Darth,” Obi-Wan said. “If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.

Although Obi-Wan had never really known his own family, he did have sympathy for Anakin’s loss. And as Anakin’s powers grew stronger, Obi-Wan began to believe that his Padawan may have been transformed by the tragedy for the better.

He was used to living in a world where adults held all the power and could always help him. He had expected that Riley's grandmother would save them from the shadow man. But what if the adults didn't have the ability to save them ?

Vader warned, “Don’t be too proud of this technological terror you’ve constructed. The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force.

Tarkin looked to Vader and said, “Perhaps she would respond to an alternative form of persuasion.” “What do you mean?” asked Vader. Tarkin said, “I think it is time we demonstrated the full power of this station.” He turned to Motti and commanded, “Set your course for Alderaan.

I have said it many times: You are the most gifted Jedi I have ever met.” Anakin felt a shiver of pleasure at the compliment. It meant even more, coming from the Chancellor. He’s not even a Jedi, and he can see I have talent! “Thank you, your Excellency,” he said. Palpatine smiled, as if he knew how good his praise made Anakin feel. “I see you becoming the greatest of all the Jedi, Anakin. Even more powerful than Master Yoda.

Chancellor Palpatine broke the silence at last. “Anakin, this afternoon the Senate is going to call on me to take direct control of the Jedi Council.” Anakin’s eyes widened. Obi-Wan had said that the Chancellor would be given new powers, but Anakin hadn’t expected anything like this. “The Jedi will no longer report to the Senate?” he asked, not entirely believing it.

Shortly after, the Emperor took his new apprentice off to a remote area of the galaxy where construction of a new superweapon was just beginning—a gigantic space station with the power to destroy whole planets with a single laser blast.

The droid brought him to the operating room. A black figure lay on the operating table. Black gloves and boots covered the new mechanical limbs; a mirror shiny black mask hid the scarred face. The table began to tilt, moving the figure to an upright position. There was the sound of breathing. Yes, Darth Sidious thought. He will terrify them. And even if he is not as powerful as I had once hoped, he will still be far more powerful than anyone else.

Another lesson: Steve was great at weighing all sides of an issue and not allowing negatives to drown out positives, particularly for things he wanted to accomplish. It was a powerful quality of his.

Managing creative processes starts with the understanding that it’s not a science—everything is subjective; there is often no right or wrong. The passion it takes to create something is powerful, and most creators are understandably sensitive when their vision or execution is questioned. I try to keep this in mind whenever I engage with someone on the creative side of our business. When I am asked to provide insights and offer critiques, I’m exceedingly mindful of how much the creators have poured themselves into the project and how much is at stake for them.

don’t know if other CEOs agree with this, but I’ve noticed that you can accumulate so much power in a job that it becomes harder to keep a check on how you wield it. Little things can start to shift. Your confidence can easily tip over into overconfidence and become a liability. You can start to feel that you’ve heard every idea, and so you become impatient and dismissive of others’ opinions. It’s not intentional, it just comes with the territory. You have to make a conscious effort to listen, to pay attention to the multitude of opinions. I’ve raised the issue with the executives I work most closely with as a kind of safeguard. “If you notice me being too dismissive or impatient, you need to tell me.” They’ve had to on occasion, but I hope not too often.

Maybe this is the case for many of us: No matter who we become or what we accomplish, we still feel that we’re essentially the kid we were at some simpler time long ago. Somehow that’s the trick of leadership, too, I think, to hold on to that awareness of yourself even as the world tells you how powerful and important you are. The moment you start to believe it all too much, the moment you look yourself in the mirror and see a title emblazoned on your forehead, you’ve lost your way.

The bond you form in high-stress moments like this, when you’re sharing information that you can’t discuss with anyone else, is a powerful one.

management by press release”—meaning that if I say something with great conviction to the outside world, it tends to resonate powerfully inside our company.

It would be a big story and would take a difficult emotional toll on the community there. The bond you form in high-stress moments like this, when you’re sharing information that you can’t discuss with anyone else, is a powerful one. In every emergency I’ve encountered as CEO, I’ve been grateful for the competence and cool heads and humanity of the team around me.

Maybe this is the case for many of us: No matter who we become or what we accomplish, we still feel that we’re essentially the kid we were at some simpler time long ago. Somehow that’s the trick of leadership, too, I think, to hold on to that awareness of yourself even as the world tells you how powerful and important you are.

Managing creative processes starts with the understanding that it’s not a science—everything is subjective; there is often no right or wrong. The passion it takes to create something is powerful, and most creators are understandably sensitive when their vision or execution is questioned.

it’s not always good for one person to have too much power for too long. Even when a CEO is working productively and effectively, it’s important for a company to have change at the top.

The start of Disney’s statement is, “We exist to create happiness . . .” Later in this chapter, we’ll explore why that is such a powerful purpose statement and what differentiates it from a mission statement in the organization’s operations.