“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’m not funny. What I am is brave.

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

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

I never thought I was funny. I don’t THINK funny.

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

Television is the quickest form of recognition in the world.

Love yourself first and everything falls into line.

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.

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

Children internalize their parents’ unhappiness. Fortunately, they absorb our contentment just as readily.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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