Top 40 Lucille Ball Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.”

— Lucille Ball

Featured in: Relationship Quotes

2. “Responsibility is the ability to respond.”

— Lucille Ball

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

— Lucille Ball

Featured in: Clever Quotes

4. “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.”

— Lucille Ball

5. “Love yourself first and everything falls into line.”

— Lucille Ball

6. “Now get the hell out of here and go change the world.”

— Lucille Ball

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

— Lucille Ball

8. “It’s a helluva start, being able to recognize what makes you happy.”

— Lucille Ball

9. “I would rather regret the things that I have done than the things that I have not.”

— Lucille Ball

10. “I believe that we’re as happy in life as we make up our minds to be.”

— Lucille Ball

11. “Luck? Luck is hard work – and realizing what is opportunity and what isn’t.”

— Lucille Ball

12. “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.”

— Lucille Ball

13. “It wasn’t love at first sight. It took a full five minutes.”

— Lucille Ball

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

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

— Lucille Ball

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

— Lucille Ball

16. “I’m not funny. What I am is brave.”

— Lucille Ball

17. “Ability is of little account without opportunity.”

— Lucille Ball

18. “The more things you do, the more things you can do.”

— Lucille Ball

19. “A man who correctly guesses a woman’s age may be smart, but he’s not very bright.”

— Lucille Ball

20. “Knowing what you can not do is more important than knowing what you can do. In fact, that’s good taste.”

— Lucille Ball

21. “I’m happy that I have brought laughter because I have been shown by many the value of it in so many lives, in so many ways.”

— Lucille Ball

22. “People either have comedy or they don’t. You can’t teach it to them.”

— Lucille Ball

23. “I will never do another TV series. It couldn’t top I Love Lucy, and I’d be foolish to try. In this business, you have to know when to get off.”

— Lucille Ball

24. “I am a real ham. I love an audience. I work better with an audience. I am dead, in fact, without one.”

— Lucille Ball

Featured in: Real Quotes

25. “I never thought I was funny. I don’t THINK funny.”

— Lucille Ball

26. “Keeping busy and making optimism a way of life can restore your faith in yourself.”

— Lucille Ball

27. “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.”

— Lucille Ball

28. “When you’re too mad and too rattled to see straight, you’re bound to make mistakes. You can’t go on and on for years being miserable about a situation and not have it change you. You get so you can’t stand yourself.”

— Lucille Ball

29. “Women’s Lib? Oh, I’m afraid it doesn’t interest me one bit. I’ve been so liberated it hurts.”

— Lucille Ball

30. “I hate failure and that divorce was a Number One failure in my eyes. It was the worst period of my life. Neither Desi nor I have been the same since, physically or mentally.”

— Lucille Ball

31. “You won’t be happy, whatever you do, unless you’re comfortable with your own conscience. Keep your head up, keep your shoulders back, keep your self-respect, be nice, be smart. And remember that there are practically no “overnight” successes.”

— Lucille Ball

32. “Whether we’re prepared or not, life has a habit of thrusting situations upon us.”

— Lucille Ball

33. “How I Love Lucy was born? We decided that instead of divorce lawyers profiting from our mistakes, we’d profit from them.”

— Lucille Ball

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

— Lucille Ball

35. “You see much more of your children once they leave home.”

— Lucille Ball

36. “Television is the quickest form of recognition in the world.”

— Lucille Ball

37. “I’m sometimes scared of everything that has happened to us. We didn’t think Desilu Productions would grow so big. We merely wanted to be together and have two children.”

— Lucille Ball

38. “Some of the most gifted people I’ve ever met or read about are homosexual. How can you knock it?”

— Lucille Ball

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

— Lucille Ball

40. “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.”

— Lucille Ball

41. “I feel sorry for young people today who feel so alone that they have to mate with their first crush. It shocks me that so many young brides are pregnant at the alter. When you have kids late in life, you appreciate them more. They keep you young, and you see the world through better eyes. You can give your children a finer sense of values, too, because if you’re lucky, you own values have improved with time.”

— Lucille Ball

42. “I have a theory about the assists we get in life. Only rarely can we repay those people who helped us, but we can pass that help along to others.”

— Lucille Ball