A tribute to Imagineer Tom Fitzgerald

We also know a guy whose great-uncle’s roommate’s stepbrother swore he said “It all started with a mouse” back in 1924. But he was referring to something different.

“If you can dream it, you can do it.” Walt Disney said that, right? Wrong. It was Tom Fitzgerald, a Disney Imagineer, who actually said “If we can dream it, we can do it,” years after Walt had passed away.

And then countless people on the internet, and many even within The Walt Disney Company, took his hard work, changed it, and attributed it to someone who had passed away over 15 years before he said it.

Not Walt Disney.

The truth from Uncle Walt’s Insider. For once.

Just to set the record straight, the quote above is not, never has been, and never will be something that Walt Disney said. The actual quote comes from the Horizons attraction at the former EPCOT CENTER AND SPA, and was written by Imagineer Tom Fitzgerald as part of the attraction’s script.

So, we raise a glass to you, Mr. Fitzgerald, and we hope that we can make more people aware of your hard work.

[Ed.: Wait, is this satire? This isn’t satire. How did this slip through to publication?]

Do you any other Walt Disney quotes he didn’t say? Let us know in the comments below!

Need more Uncle Walt’s in your life? Be sure to LIKE us on Facebook, FOLLOW us on Twitter, and tell everyone you know!

Cover photo: Correcting the record. Cover photo by Gervacio Rosales [CC BY 3.0] via Wikimedia. Inset photo of Tom Fitzgerald [CC BY-SA] via pirates.fandom.com.