Hugh Hefner Quotes

1. Life is too short to be living somebody else's dream.


2. The major civilizing force in the world is not religion, it is sex.


3. The interesting thing is how one guy, through living out his own fantasies, is living out the fantasies of so many other people.

4. Surrounding myself with beautiful women keeps me young.

5. I always say now that I'm in my blonde years. Because since the end of my marriage, all of my girlfriends have been blonde.


6. I don't have dinner parties - I eat my dinner in bed.


7. In my wildest dreams, I could not have imagined a sweeter life.

8. My folks were raised pure prohibitionist. They were very good people, with high moral standards - but very repressed. There was no hugging and kissing in my home.

9. 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.

10. I am in very good health. I've never felt better.

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

12. Historically the Puritans left England to escape religious persecution, and they promptly turned around and started persecuting the people they didn't agree with - the scarlet letter A, and the stocks and the dunking board came from that. That puritanism is still there.



13. I have about 100 pairs of pajamas. I like to see people dressed comfortably.

14. I have no plans to retire. It's the perfect combination of work and play that keeps you young. If I quit work it would be the beginning of the end for me.


15. 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.

16. I remain very much connected to my childhood...I have never been too jaded or too sophisticated.

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







18. 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.

19. I was very influenced by the musicals and romantic comedies of the 1930s. I admired Gene Harlow and such, which probably explains why, since the end of my marriage, I've dated nothing but a succession of blondes.

20. My parents are wonderful people and they instilled in me an idealism for which I'm grateful. But my parents also raised a son whose skepticism of bullshit included even the bullshit they themselves accepted.

21. The business end of business has never interested me.

22. I'm very comfortable with the nature of life and death, and that we come to an end. What's most difficult to imagine is that those dreams and early yearnings and desires of childhood and adolescence will also disappear. But who knows? Maybe you become part of the eternal whatever.

23. Picasso had his pink period and his blue period. I am in my blonde period right now.

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



25. The notion of the single man began in the 1950's. The idea of the bachelor as a separate life was new and obscure.

26. 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.




27. 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.

28. 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.



29. 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.

30. 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.


31. 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.

32. I am a kid in the candy store. I dreamed impossible dreams. And the dreams turned out beyond anything I could possibly imagine. You know, from my point of view, I'm the luckiest cat on the planet.


33. Follow your own particular dreams. We are handed a life by peers, parents and society, you can do that or follow your own dreams. Life is short, be a dreamer but be a practical person.

34. If you don't encourage healthy sexual expression in public, you get unhealthy sexual expression in private. If you attempt to suppress sex in books, magazines, movies and even everyday conversation, you aren't helping to make sex more private, just more hidden. You're keeping sex in the dark. What we've tried to do is turn on the lights.

35. I truly believe that age - if you're healthy - age is just a number.




36. There are many roads to Mecca.

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

38. We're separated by our myths.

39. It has been our experience that women usually prefer thin, undernourished, flatchested females, dressed to the teeth, as a concept of "feminine beauty" - and that men prefer exactly the opposite: voluptuous, well-rounded and undressed. The women's idealization of woman is actually a male counterpart, competing with man in society; man's view of women is far more truly feminine.

40. 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.







41. Did you know that I almost called the magazine Stag Party and the symbol was originally going to be a stag? I changed my mind just before we went to press, thank God. Somehow, it wouldn't have been the same. Can you imagine a chain of key clubs staffed by beautiful girls wearing antlers?

42. To begin with, I fought racism, then sexism, now I'm fighting ageism. One defines oneself in one's own terms. If you let society and your peers define who you are, you're the less for it.






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

44. 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.

45. Of course, it is the nature of the beast to find the prude and the bigot most anxious to force his or her opinion of what is right on the rest of us. They often seem to have nothing better to do with themselves than worry about the affairs of their neighbors.

46. Women have traditionally been either put on pedestals or damned as the source of all sexual temptation and sin. These are two sides of the same coin, since both place women in a nonhuman role. Playboy has opposed these warped sexual values and, in so doing, helped women step down from their pedestals and enjoy their natural sexuality as much as men.


47. My life is an open book. With illustrations.

48. The Puritans thought they could simply repress man's sexual nature, and they reaped a whirlwind as a result. Their code of sexual morality - which became America's - was nothing more than a set of rules laid down by people who believed that all pleasure was suspect.




49. 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.

50. It was risky enough that I didn't put my name on the first issue.





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

52. Playboy exploits sex the way Sports Illustrated exploits sports.

53. There have been three great inventions in the history of mankind; fire, the wheel and Playboy.

54. I'm bored of the hanky-panky. I'm still active, but it's different - I like to play dominoes with my girlfriends. Having three beautiful women keeps the years off me.

55. Holly will always be welcome here at the mansion, but not as a girlfriend. I think she's happy now, and I know I am.

56. There was a moment when I was having s*x with four Playmates and I almost swallowed a Ben Wa ball.

57. My childhood dreams and fantasies came from the movies. The images created in Hollywood had a major influence on my life. Helping to save the Hollywood sign a second time made this a very special night. We celebrated at the "Iron Man 2" premiere.

58. I'll keep having sex until I'm 100. I have three girlfriends, a TV show and a hugely popular men's magazine.

59. Maxim and FHM and the "laddie books" are really just a downscale version of Playboy. The men's field is really hot today, and that is part of all of the controversy and the fascination with the laddie books. What is being played out here is variations on the theme that really began with Playboy.

60. I do eventually think Holly and I will have a monogamous relationship. Do Kendra and Bridget know that? Sure it's fine with them, they are here for very different reasons.


61. For the record, I have sex on a weekly basis. And I did throughout my two-and-a-half years with Crystal.

62. I do think that monogamy is possible. I just don't think it's the natural way of things.


63. Playboy isn't like the downscale, male bonding, beer-swilling phenomena that is being promoted now by (some men's magazines). My whole notion was the romantic connection between male and female.


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