Lucille Ball Quotes

Lucille Ball (1911 - 1989)

Lucille Ball, 1960s
Lucille Ball, 1960s. Archive Photos / Getty Images

Lucille Ball began her career in musical comedy, became a success in radio comedy, starred in several movie comedies, and achieved her greatest popular success with her TV show, I Love Lucy, first airing in 1951 and running until 1957. She also starred in The Lucy Show (1962-68) and Here's Lucy (1968-74). Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, who produced I Love Lucy together as well as starred in the show, were married from 1940 to 1960. Lucille Ball managed Desilu Productions from 1962 to 1967 and Lucille Ball Productions from 1967 to 1989.

Selected Lucille Ball Quotations

• I never thought I was funny. I don't think funny.

• I'm not funny. What I am is brave.

• Ability is of little account without opportunity.

• The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age.

• If you want something done, ask a busy person to do it. The more things you do, the more you can do.

• Luck? I don't know anything about luck. I've never banked on it, and I'm afraid of people who do. Luck to me is something else: Hard work — and realizing what is opportunity and what isn't.

• One of the things I learned the hard way was that it doesn't pay to get discouraged. Keeping busy and making optimism a way of life can restore your faith in yourself.

• I think knowing what you cannot do is more important than knowing what you can do. In fact, that's good taste.

• I would rather regret the things that I have done than the things that I have not.

• In life, all good things come hard, but wisdom is the hardest to come by.

• I have an everyday religion that works for me. Love yourself first, and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.

• Once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead.

• My God, I'm outliving my henna.

• Women's lib?...It doesn't interest me one bit. I've been so liberated it hurts.

• Politics should be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage.

• It's a helluva start, being able to recognize what makes you happy.

• Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.

• I regret the passing of the studio system. I was very appreciative of it because I had no talent.

• What could I do? I couldn't dance. I couldn't sing. I could talk.

• Heaven, no. I was shy for several years in my early days in Hollywood until I figured out that no one really gave a damn if I was shy or not, and I got over my shyness.

• You see much more of your children once they leave home.

• Use a make-up table with everything close at hand and don’t rush; otherwise you’ll look like a patchwork quilt.

• A man who correctly guesses a woman's age may be smart, but he's not very bright.

• What we did on [i[I Love Lucy was not slapstick. I worked with the Three Stooges years ago, and they were masters of slapstick, so I know what slapstick is.

• The best thing I learned from working with the Stooges was when to duck! It's true. Your timing has to be right so that you don't get hurt in the scene. The Stooges were always teaching people on the set how to duck.

• You spell Bob Hope C-L-A-S-S.

• I don't do T & A very well because I haven't got much of either.

Quote collection assembled by Jone Johnson Lewis.