Quotes by Hugh Hefner

There's almost a Rorschach-test quality about writing about 'Playboy'. What comes out in the press is not so much about me as it is about society.

In my own words, I played some significant part in changing the social-sexual values of our time. I had a lot of fun in the process.

What made the magazine so popular was, even before I started writing the philosophy, there was a point of view in the magazine.

For me, the magazine was always the heart of what my life was all about, and the other half was living the life.

Even when I was young, I said age is largely a state of mind if you're healthy.

If I ever try to get married again, shoot me.

I think everyone should get married. I just took a little longer than usual.

Men project their fantasies onto me; they live them through who they think I am.

Could I be in a better place and happier than I am today? I don't think so.

Part of the concept behind the magazine was breaking barriers. And it wasn't just a sexual thing. It was racial and doing the things that were right. And in the process, that set 'Playboy' apart.

I was an absent dad. Once the magazine started, I really had two families. The dream was the magazine. I worked through the night all the time.

At a very early age I started a cartoon scrapbook, actually when I was in high school. And it became, in turn, a scrapbook of my life. And there are about 2,000 volumes.

There were chunks of my life when I was married, and when I was married, I never cheated. But I made up for it when I wasn't married. You have to keep your hand in.

There were chunks of my life when I was married, and when I was married I never cheated. But I made up for it when I wasn't married. You have to keep your hand in.

There's always been a little bit of the crusader in me, and you need dragons to slay, without the conflict and the controversy I think that what I managed to do less, and I take a great deal of pride in the accomplishment.

I'm not an active feminist: I'm an active humanist.

If it was wrong to persecute heterosexuals in a homosexual society, then the reverse was wrong, too.

People project their own dreams, fantasies, and prejudices onto my life. So people are either fans, or jealous, or disagree. Everybody marches to a different drummer.

I think that the major message of my life and what I hope to be remembered for is someone who managed to change the social sexual values of his time absolutely.

We're separated by our myths.

Playboy, very clearly, from the outset, has fought against the historical repression of women. The notion that we were anywhere else simply defies the reality.

I think the Playboy philosophy is very, very connected to the American dream.

I am not primarily an entrepreneurial businessman. I'm primarily a playboy philosopher.

Loneliness doesn't have much to do with where you are.

I always think, quite frankly that pop culture is a lot more important than a lot of people realize.

I was raised in a truly typical Midwestern home with a lot of repression. My life, and the creation of Playboy, were a response to that repression.

Being attacked by right-wing Christians did not bother me. Being attacked by liberal feminists did.

Sex, and the attraction between the sexes, does make the world go 'round.

It's women who have embraced their own sexuality, it's why women wear makeup, it's why they wear high heels. It's what civilization is all about.

To pursue your dreams, to have them come true, to have made a difference, to have changed society, to have fought against powerful forces... that's a life well-spent.

What's amazing is that the taste of American men and international tastes in terms of beauty have essentially stayed the same. Styles change, but our view of beauty stays the same.

The people who had the most impact on me when I was young were Freud and Darwin, but growing up I also had my film idols.

I was writing and cartooning and writing short stories from grade school on.

In the '80s and '90s we started to have economic problems because society became more conservative. So we didn't have the wherewithal for expanding to other areas.

Power has not corrupted me. I have not become jaded. I wake up every day well aware of my good fortune, loving the work I do, loving my life, realizing that life is a crapshoot and I'm on a roll second to none.

I think that retirement is the first step towards the grave.

For some people, there is no succession plan. They just leave, and there's no getting over it.

If Playboy ever loses its editorial balls, then it will deserve to be knocked over by a younger, more vigorous magazine in the coming generation. But that won't happen so long as I'm alive, I can promise you that.

You stay in touch with the boy who dreamed impossible dreams.

Smoking helped put me in touch with the realm of the senses.

I guess you could say, I'm just a typical Methodist kid at heart.

Creating my own world in a comic or selling my first penny newspaper aged nine was a way of gaining recognition and acceptance by my peers.

I think that there's nothing wrong with masturbation. If you're not feeling good about your own sexuality and your own body, you're not going to feel good about anything else.

My best pick-up line is My name is Hugh Hefner.

Someone once asked, 'What's your best pickup line?' I said, 'My best pickup line is, 'Hi, my name is Hugh Hefner.''

I've never thought of Playboy, quite frankly, as a sex magazine. I always thought of it as a lifestyle magazine in which sex was one important ingredient.

Since time immemorial, youth has set the universal standard of physical beauty, and the reason is simply that a shapely firm young face and body are more attractive sexually and aesthetically than bulges, sags and wrinkles.

My first wife was a brunette, and Barbi Benton, my major romantic relationship of the early 1970s, was a brunette. But since the end of my marriage, all of my girlfriends have been blonds.

I'm never going to grow up. Staying young is what it is all about for me.

What surprises me about getting older is that I remain so young.

I was fortunate enough to be raised in a, in a very romantic time in terms of music, and the music itself simple reflected the much more romantic time.

I was a very idealistic, very romantic kid in a very typically Midwestern Methodist repressed home. There was no show of affection of any kind, and I escaped to dreams and fantasies produced, by and large, by the music and the movies of the '30s.

It is the beauty of women, and the fact that they are the focus, that they are sex objects in a positive sense, is the reason we have civilization.

I think getting married was a mistake along the way, but at the same time I wouldn't have the wonderful children I have if I didn't get married.

I'm not putting myself up as the epitome of virtue. I certainly am living a non-traditional life. But it is also a loving life and a very supportive one. I think that both in this, and the previous relationship, I think that I've been doing the best I can.

I can remember in my adolescence feeling that many of the things that were hurtful and hypocritical in society were things related to sex. They included the kind of censorship laws that existed in the movies and books when I was young.

The women's movement kind of came out of left field in the 1960s and 1970s when they turned on 'Playboy.'

I have very strong theories about magazine publishing. And I think that it is the most personal form of journalism. And I think that a magazine is an old friend.

My life is an open book. With illustrations.

Publishing a sophisticated men's magazine seemed to me the best possible way of fulfilling a dream I'd been nurturing ever since I was a teenager: to get laid a lot.

I suggested that sex was not the enemy, that violence was the enemy, that nice girls like sex.

Playboy was founded on the notion that nice girls like sex too.

Beauty is everywhere -- on the campus, in the office, living next door... Nice girls like sex too -- it's a natural part of life. Don't be ashamed of it.

You really don't create an authoritarian society unless you control the personal choices including the sexual choices of the people.

People get their information in different ways now. And we are a little poorer for it, because the way you get information affects what you learn.

I would like to think that I will be remembered as someone who had some positive impact on the sociosexual values of his time. And I think I'm secure and happy in that.

Part of the sexual revolution is bringing rationality to sexuality. Because when you don't embrace sexuality in a normal way, you get the twisted kinds, and the kinds that destroy lives.

It is women who have traditionally, historically been given non-human roles, perceived as simply the daughters of Eve, perceived as either Madonna or whore. And I think that it is the sexual revolution that plays one part in female emancipation.

The women's movement, from my point of view, was part of the larger sexual revolution that 'Playboy' had played such a large part in. The reality is that the major beneficiaries of the sexual revolution are women.

Playboy exploits sex the way Sports Illustrated exploits sports.

I feel saddened when people who have major friendships or marriages wind up on the outs. Because I think you lose a little piece of yourself.

One of the problems with organized religion is that it has always kept women in a second-class position. They have been viewed as the daughters of Eve.

The whole 1950s notion was find the right girl, get married, move to the suburbs and then hang out with the guys while she stayed home with the babies. I felt that was sort of sad.

The notion that Playboy exploited women, because we showed them in beautiful photographs, sexually oriented, strikes me as rather bizarre.

I felt quite frankly having been raised during the depression and looking back at the roaring twenties, the jazz age, which was a very magic timer in my mind because it was something that I had missed.

Because of the nature of my life, it's difficult for people to recognize that a person can live a full life, and maybe an unorthodox life, and still be on the side of the angels.

When I was four, we moved to the house on the west side of Chicago where I grew up. My earliest memories are of that first summer.

Ageism is a variation of racism or sexism, all the other isms.

I urge one and all to live this life as if there is no reward in the afterlife and to do it in a moral way that makes it better for you and for those around you, and that leaves this world a little better place than when you found it.

One of the sad things, I think, about the younger generation, quite frankly, is they have less sense of yesterday. And if you don't know who you were, you don't really know who you are.

Sex is the driving force on the planet. We should embrace it, not see it as the enemy.

The difference between Marilyn Monroe and the early Pamela Anderson is not that great.

Retirement is unthinkable to me. The future is bright and very exciting and I'm looking forward to playing a part in it.