The best I Love Lucy quotes prove why it is one of the most influential sitcoms in television history. Appearing on CBS, I Love Lucy ran for six seasons, had 180 episodes, won five Emmy Awards, and was the first scripted television program to film in 35mm film in front of a live studio audience. The stars of the show were Lucille Ball (Lucy), her real-life husband Desi Arnaz (Ricky Ricardo), and their two best friends and neighbors, Vivan Vance (Ethel) and William Frawley (Fred).
With Lucy and Ricky as the focus of the cast, the four lived in New York City, where Ricky was an entertainer. Wanting to be famous herself, Lucy tried to be a part of her husband’s acts and usually conspired tricks with Ethel to do so. What transpired was fantastic TV in the ’50s and even to this day. I Love Lucy still has reruns on TV today and ABC News and People Magazine conducted a survey in 2012, with it named the Best TV Show of All Time (via ABC News). Thanks to the best I Love Lucy quotes, it remains a beloved show over 70 years after it debuted on TV.
10.“Sure, Says Right Here ‘We Work Miracles.'”
Lucy To Ethel
This quote comes from the episode “Charm School” and it involves Lucy jabbing her best friend Ethel with a lighthearted insult. After being snubbed by Ricky and Fred for attending a classy party, Ethel and Lucy are sick and tired of being left out. The pair learn about Phoebe Emerson’s Charm School and debate whether they should enroll. Lucy agrees with Ethel that the charm school could work miracles, but her comment comes off as offensive after realizing how much work Ethel might need.
The girls spent all week trying to become classier versions of themselves and, in the end, their men thought their new looks were horrendous. In return, the guys also changed their appearance, leading to the four of them calling it a tie. The quote and the entire storyline were awkward, as even when Lucy went to Phoebe Emerson’s Charm School, the owner insulted her without even realizing it. It seems almost mean-spirited, but Lucy gives back as much as she takes, so it all works out.
9.“Ethel And I Have Decided That You Have Married Us And Not A Television Set.”
Lucy To Fred & Ricky
This episode is funny since I Love Lucy is a television show, yet it still makes fun of people who watch too much television. The main storyline sees the couple get a brand-new TV, which was still relatively new to many American families during that era. Fred and Ricky loved the TV and started spending a lot of time watching everything they could which didn’t go down well with their wives. Eventually, Lucy and Ethel had to sit their husbands down and let them know that they were more important than the television.
Ethel and Fred may have been older than Lucy and Ricky, but the foursome got along great, and the women were not about to let a new gadget in the home come in between their relationships. This shows the bond that Ethel and Lucy have with each other, and they remain stronger when they’re standing together and letting the men know what is really important in their families. Of course, I Love Lucy was the most-watched show of that era, so obviously, fans at home didn’t heed this advice.
8.“I Was Going To But Then I Asked Myself, ‘Why?'”
Lucy To Ricky
One of the things that seems strange in today’s society is the fact that Lucy and Ricky sleep in separate beds despite being married. This is because the standards & practices for the networks banned scenes that showed two people in the same bed, even if they were married. During the time that I Love Lucy was on the air, married TV couples sharing a bed was considered “scandalous” and many censors felt it sent the wrong message to kids watching the show. As a result, most shows had two beds, one for the husband and one for the wife.
In this specific scene, Ricky walks into the bedroom and sees Lucy sitting in her bed. He looks at his wife, and asks, “I thought you were going to get up?” Lucy, in a funk, simply replied with this I Love Lucy quote, showing her weariness at the moment. This might be one of the most relatable I Love Lucy quotes from the entire series, because it is easy to see how hard it is for her to find motivation to do anything on some days, even if that is just getting out of bed.
7.“I Can’t Help It, Eating Is My Hobby.”
Ethel To Lucy
The first season introduced an episode called “The Diet.” As expected, this is an episode where the cast worries about the fact that they put on a few extra pounds and need to do something to lose the weight. Each of the four main characters promises to eat better and lose that added weight. The episode remains slightly problematic in the modern day because it is mostly fat shaming and even Ricky bribes Lucy to lose 12 pounds with the promise he will let her into his next show if she does so.
However, it also contains a perfect line, especially coming from Ethel. She famously says “I can’t help it, eating is my hobby” and she’s never been more relatable. By the end of the episode, Lucy practically starves herself for five days to look her best in Ricky’s show. She did a great job and made Ricky proud until she fainted after the show, was carried away to the hospital for being dehydrated, and realized that losing all that weight isn’t worth it if it hurts the person in the end.
6.“Ever Since We Said ‘I Do’ There Are So Many Things We Don’t.”
Lucy To Ethel
This I Love Lucy quote sounds a lot worse than it really is. This is during a conversation between Lucy and Ethel while they are cleaning in the kitchen and Ethel mentioned how Ricky is a bandleader and Lucy’s life should be full of nightclubs and parties all the time. Lucy said that was what she thought would happen when she married him, but that isn’t how things turned out. This quote is Lucy bemoaning the fact that she and Ricky never do anything fun or romantic together anymore, which makes it a sad statement.
The episode is “The Girls Want to Go to a Nightclub,” and it is Ethel and Fred’s anniversary. While the guys want to see the big fight, the ladies want to be wined and dined at a nightclub. Deciding to go their separate ways, the guys get dates (through Ricky’s agency) and Lucy makes a deal with the agency to replace their dates. It all backfired because they ended up going to the fights anyway, meaning Ricky and Fred got their way.
5.“I Don’t Know But How Dare You.”
Lucy To Ricky
One of the most unique parts of I Love Lucy is that Lucy married a Cuban. At the time that Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz pitched the show, CBS wasn’t sure America would buy the fact that these two were together in real life. Their love was real, though, and Ball and Arnaz had been married since 1940. Their real love story helped make I Love Lucy even better than it could have been since they didn’t have to fake that aspect of the character’s relationships.
Some of the show’s best parts are when Ricky is rattling things off in Spanish, leaving Lucy confused and annoyed that he was *probably* talking about her in a negative way, and she had no idea what he was really saying. In one scene, Ricky is rattling off a few words in Spanish when Lucy says “How dare you.” Knowing she has no clue what he said, he asks her anyway, and she repeats, “I don’t know, but how dare you.” It was a scene that showed even their misunderstandings resulted in funny moments.
4.“Here I Am With All This Talent Bottled Up Inside Of Me.”
Lucy To Ricky
“And You’re Always Sitting On The Cork”
In the episode “The Ballet,” Lucy finds out Ricky is in desperate need of a ballerina for his show. Always wanting to find stardom, and always begging for a spot in one of Ricky’s shows, Lucy begins taking ballet lessons to master the art so she can win the job. Lucy makes this comment, showing how much confidence she has in herself, even if she has no idea what she is doing, and has to somehow figure things out along the way in order to even get a chance to take the stage. Here, she trains at Madame Le Mond’s class.
In this case, she succeeds and all her hard work pays off. However, when she does get the chance to perform, she realizes that she learned the burlesque comic act and not the ballet act, and everything goes wrong. Viewers might notice that by the time that Lucy gets the chance to perform, she has bruises all over her body. What is really interesting is that those were real bruises that Lucille Ball got while training to learn ballet for the episode throughout the week.
3.“That Won’t Be A Novel, That Will Be A Short Story.”
Ethel To Lucy
If anything, Lucy and Ethel are brutally honest with each other, and while it might come off as rude or condescending, it is always in the name of love and friendship. In the episode “Lucy Writes a Novel,” Lucy tells Ethel that she plans to write her own novel. The title is Real Gone With the Wind, and when Ethel asks what Lucy is writing about, she tells her that she is “writing about things I know.” That is what leads Ethel to deliver this quip, basically saying that Lucy doesn’t know a lot and surely not enough for a novel.
However, it seems Lucy was being serious and she was writing a novel about her life and everyone in it. This really puts off Ricky, Ethel, and Fred, who secretly read the manuscript as she writes it and doesn’t want anything she wrote about them to end up being printed. Sadly, there is a miscommunication between Lucy and the publishers, and her dreams come crashing down. However, as Ethel’s quote demonstrated, that wasn’t anything that should have taken Lucy by surprise.
2.“Gee, Why Is It That Everything That’s Wonderful Costs Money?”
Ethel To Lucy
If there is any I Love Lucy quote that is just as true today as it was when the show aired 70 years ago, it is one that Ethel says to Lucy about money. The idea of the lack of money is something that plays out a lot in the sitcom. Lucy is a shopaholic and likes to spend money almost faster than Ricky can make it. Ethel, on the other hand, isn’t so lucky because Fred has a very tight-wad attitude about spending, and his wife pays the price by not getting what she wants most of the time, which leads to this quote.
Ethel isn’t wrong as the best things in life aren’t always free. While Ethel bemoans the fact that she can’t afford to buy things that would surely make her happy, it leads the women to do something almost unheard of in that era. They went and got jobs at the chocolate factory so they could have money of their own to spend. Fred might have a tight grip on his money, but Ethel knows if she wants to afford things to make herself happy, she needs to make her own money, and that is exactly what she does.
1.“You Mean To Tell Us That We Have Equal Rights.”
Ethel To Fred
“But You Certainly Don’t Give Us A Chance To Act Like It”
There are a lot of things that might not hold up well today in shows like I Love Lucy, based on the era that the stories came from. However, while there is sexism, body shaming, and more involved in many stories, there is also a strong backbone of women’s rights issues, something that Lucille Ball was strongly in favor of, and when a big actor like Lucille Ball said something, audiences listened. If there is one I Love Lucy quote that signifies this way of thinking, it is one that Ethel says to Fred. While she says it in jest, it hammers home what women like Lucy were thinking at the time.
Ethel mockingly asks why, if they have equal rights, the men around them don’t seem to act like it or treat them as equals. Throughout I Love Lucy, Fred kept a strong grasp on what Ethel could and couldn’t do and Ricky had a dominant personality over Lucy. However, at the same time, both Fred and Ricky were made to look like buffoons much of the time, and Lucy made sure that she did everything she could to ensure that she was treated with as much respect as possible, making her one of the strongest feminist figures on television.
