Lucille Ball Quotes

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

— Lucille Ball

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

— Lucille Ball

“I'd rather regret the things I have done than the things that I haven't.”

— Lucille Ball

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

— Lucille Ball

“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

“I have an everyday religion that works for me. Love yourself first, and everything else falls into line.”

— Lucille Ball

“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 opportunity is and what isn't.”

— Lucille Ball

People either have comedy or they don't. You can't teach it to them.

— Lucille Ball

“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

“I'd rather regret the things I've done than regret the things I haven't done.”

— Lucille Ball

“I'd rather regret the things that I have done than the things that I have not.”

— Lucille Ball

“Responsibility is the ability to respond.”

— Lucille Ball

I would rather regret the things I have done than the things I have not

— Lucille Ball

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

“I think knowing what you cannot do is more important than knowing what you can.”

— Lucille Ball

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

— Lucille Ball

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

— Lucille Ball

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

— Lucille Ball

Ability is of little account without opportunity.

— Lucille Ball

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

— Lucille Ball

“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

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

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

— Lucille Ball

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

— Lucille Ball

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

— Lucille Ball

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

— Lucille Ball

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

— Lucille Ball

“I don't think you should write a book until you tell the absolute truth. You can't do that until you're 85, and I don't want to live that long. I've always prided myself on knowing when to get off, and I hope it works out that way.”

— Lucille Ball

“How to do half-hour comedy innovatively is something I do pride myself on. We invented it with 'I Love Lucy.'”

— Lucille Ball

“I don't know how to tell a joke. I never tell jokes. I can tell stories that happened to me ... anecdotes. But never a joke.”

— Lucille Ball

I wanted to get out of the pictures and stay home so that I could have children.

— Lucille Ball

“I've seen 'Mork & Mindy' a couple times. Robin Williams amazes me. And I love Gary Coleman. He puts me away. He puts everybody away.”

— Lucille Ball

You spell Bob Hope C-L-A-S-S.

— Lucille Ball

I'm not sure that I want to be without some lack of confidence. If you are too sure of yourself, you don't grow. You may feel confident in some things, but other fields come up as a challenge. And if you don't anticipate trouble, you will be in trouble.

— Lucille Ball

“TV started for me just as a means of keeping my husband Desi off the road. He'd been on tour with his band since he got out of the Army, and we were in our 11th year of marriage and wanted to have children.”

— Lucille Ball

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

— Lucille Ball

Whether we're prepared or not, life has a habit of thrusting situations upon us.

— Lucille Ball

“Children internalize their parents' unhappiness. Fortunately, they absorb our contentment just as readily.”

— Lucille Ball

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

— Lucille Ball

“Luck? Luck is hard work - and realizing what is opportunity and what isn't.”

— Lucille Ball

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

— Lucille Ball

“Remember to recognize the small successes that you will have. Don't let the brightness of that big goal blind you to what happens on the way toward the goal. Meet one wave at a time and enjoy what progress you make. I want you please not to be taken up in the undertow of pessimism.”

— Lucille Ball

“I don't suppose that hard work, discipline, and a perfectionist attitude toward my work did me any harm. They are a big part of my makeup today, as any of my co-workers will tell you. And
when life seemed unbearable, I learned to live in my imagination, and to step inside other people's skins- indispensable abilities for an actress.”

— Lucille Ball

Here's what I advise any young struggling actress today: The important thing is to develop as a woman first, and a performer second. You wouldn't prostitute yourself to get a part, not if
you're in the right mind. You won't be happy, whatever you do, unless you're comfortable with your own conscience.

— Lucille Ball

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

— Lucille Ball

It wasn't love at first sight. It took a full five minutes.

— Lucille Ball

“I am not funny. The writers were funny. My directors were funny. The situations were funny ... What I am is brave. I have never been scared. Not when I did movies, certainly not when I was a model and not when I did I Love Lucy.”

— Lucille Ball

“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

“I never thought I was funny. I don't THINK funny.”

— Lucille Ball

“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