Politics & Power Quote by Desi Arnaz

A neat little act of self-deprecation does the heavy lifting here: Desi Arnaz turns “Latin temper” - a stereotype often used to mark Latino men as volatile or untrustworthy - into a punchline that flatters even as it disarms. He admits to blowing up “pretty fast,” but the second half flips the expected narrative. The anger isn’t simmering; it evaporates. That reversal matters because it recasts emotional intensity as a kind of health, even wisdom: better to vent and move on than to bottle it up and pay the price.

The ulcer line is doing two jobs at once. On the surface it’s a breezy, comic pseudo-medical observation, the kind of mid-century one-liner that lands because it sounds like folk science. Underneath, it’s a sly critique of the buttoned-up American ideal of self-control, where “keeping it together” often means swallowing rage, stress, and humiliation until the body keeps score. Arnaz isn’t just defending a temperament; he’s proposing a competing emotional etiquette.

Context sharpens the intent. Arnaz spent his career translating “Latin-ness” for U.S. audiences, especially on I Love Lucy, where ethnicity was frequently a gag and assimilation was the underlying plot. This line reads like a performer’s survival strategy: accept the label, reshape it, and walk away with the laugh. It’s charm with a backbone - a way to control the stereotype before it controls him.