Hugh Hefner famous quotes

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

#Party #Bed #Dinner

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.
-- Hugh Hefner

#School #Cartoon #Age

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.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Daughter #Class #Kept Woman

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.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Thinking #Impact #Remembered

Life is too short to be living somebody else's dream.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Life #Dream #Too Short

I was raised in a typical Puritan Midwestern Methodist home and there was a lot of hurt and hypocrisy in those times. And I think that whatever part Playboy played and that I managed to play in terms of the sexual revolution came out of what I saw in the negative part of that life and tried to change things in some positive way so that people could choose alternate personal ways of living their lives.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Hurt #Home #Thinking

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

#Life #Motivational #People

After all the Puritans came to America to escape from persecution and then turned around and started persecuting other people. So I understand that conflict that we have related to play and pleasure and sexuality. And I think what has made my life worthwhile is trying to deal with some of those questions.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Thinking #Play #America

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

#Dream #Optimistic #Boys

I think being connected to younger people helps to keep you young and gives you a young attitude.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Attitude #Thinking #People

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.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Revolution #Normal #Way

I think age, if you are healthy, I think age is largely a number. My mother lived to be 101. So I'm planning on another quarter century.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Mother #Thinking #Numbers

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.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Dream #Life Is Short #Parent

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.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Children #Mistake #Thinking

I have about 100 pairs of pajamas. I like to see people dressed comfortably.
-- Hugh Hefner

#People #Pairs #Pajamas

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.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Play #Perfect #Would Be

The notion that Playboy turns women into sex objects is ridiculous. Women are sex objects. If women weren't sex objects, there wouldn't be another generation. It's the attraction between the sexes that makes the world go 'round. That's why women wear lipstick and short skirts.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Sex #Generations #World

The major civilizing force in the world is not religion, it is sex.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Sex #World #Force

My life is an open book. With illustrations.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Hilarious #Book #Illustration

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.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Sex #Important #Magazines

There are many roads to Mecca.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Mecca

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

#Thinking #Today

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

#Loneliness #Where You Are

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

#Weed #Smoking #Realms

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.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Dream #Sex #Teenager

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

#Homosexual #Reverse

I think that I am the luckiest cat on the planet and I'm living out my own dreams and fantasies and have been for a number of years and to remain at this stage of my life, you know, so alive and things have never been better.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Dream #Cat #Thinking

Playboy exploits sex the way Sports Illustrated exploits sports.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Sports #Sex #Way

I didn't want to repeat my parents life. I saw in their lives a routine and a lack of dreaming, a lack of the possibilities, a lack of passion. And I didn't want to live without passion.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Dream #Passion #Parent

They must be doing something right up there in Canada.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Canada

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

#Differences

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.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Change #Thinking #Messages

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

#Sex #Enemy #Driving

In many ways, Im younger than I was 20 years ago,
-- Hugh Hefner

#Years #Way

It's perfectly clear to me that religion is a myth. It's something we have invented to explain the inexplicable. My religion and the spiritual side of my life come from a sense of connection to the humankind and nature on this planet and in the universe. I am in overwhelming awe of it all: It is so fantastic, so complex, so beyond comprehension. What does it all mean -- if it has any meaning at all? But how can it all exist if it doesn't have some kind of meaning? I think anyone who suggests that they have the answer is motivated by the need to invent answers, because we have no such answers.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Spiritual #Mean #Thinking

We're separated by our myths.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Mythology #Myth

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

#Retirement #Looking Forward #Exciting

It's good to be selfish. But not so self-centered that you never listen to other people.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Selfish #People #Self Centered

I am in very good health. I've never felt better.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Good Health #Very Good

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

#Live Life #Heart #Magazines

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.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Acceptance #Creating #World

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

#Christian #Wings #Feminist

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.
-- Hugh Hefner

#People #Different #Littles

You know, from my point of view, I'm the luckiest cat on the planet.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Cat #Views #Planets

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.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Girlfriend #Years #Dating

If you let society and your peers define who you are, you're the less for it.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Peers #Who You Are

In my wildest dreams, I could not have imagined a sweeter life.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Dream #Wildest Dreams

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

#Heart #Kids #Typical

I looked back on the roaring Twenties, with its jazz, 'Great Gatsby' and the pre-Code films as a party I had somehow managed to miss.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Party #Missing #Twenties

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

#Childhood #Sophisticated #Connected

The Westwood Cemetery is just a few blocks from my home, and a number of my very dear friends are buried there.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Block #Home #Numbers

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.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Dream #Life And Death #Childhood

Surrounding myself with beautiful women keeps me young.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Beautiful #Beautiful Women #Young

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

#Men #Ideas #Single Life

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

#Names #Lines #Said

My parents are wonderful people and they instilled in me an idealism for which I'm grateful.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Grateful #People #Parent

I think that retirement is the first step towards the grave.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Retirement #Thinking #Firsts

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.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Women #Views #Opposites

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

#Believe #Numbers #Healthy

I got married before I found myself. People should find themselves before they get married.
-- Hugh Hefner

#People #Married #Should

The business end of business has never interested me.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Ends

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.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Beer #Men #Males

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.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Life #Thinking #Supportive

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.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Women #Two Sides #Temptation

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.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Thinking #Yesterday #Generations

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

#People #Plans #Over It

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?
-- Hugh Hefner

#Beautiful #Girl #Party

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.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Long #Promise #Generations

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.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Men #America #People

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

#Names #Lines #Pick Up Line

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.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Hands #Married #Made

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.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Fun #Social #Significant

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.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Sex #Book #Dark

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.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Girl #Sex #Nice

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.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Wrinkles #Body #Faces

I'm actually a very moral guy.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Guy #Moral

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.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Girlfriend #Wife #Firsts

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

#Girl #Sex #Nice

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.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Dream #Cat #Views

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

#Business #Philosopher #Entrepreneurial

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.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Comedy #Genes #Ends

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.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Strong #Thinking #Media

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.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Men #Views #Differences

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.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Growing Up #Impact #Idols

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.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Girl #Baby #Moving

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.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Religious #People #England

Picasso had his pink period and his blue period. I am in my blonde period right now.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Blue #Blonde #Blue Eyes

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

#Getting Older #Age #Surprise

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.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Angel #People #Unorthodox

Without question, love in its various permutations is what we need more of in this world. The idea that the concept of marriage will be sullied by same-sex marriage is ridiculous. Heterosexuals haven't been doing that well at it on their own.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Sex #Ideas #Needs

Several girlfriends are easier to handle than one wife.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Girlfriend #Wife #Easier

I've nailed more women than I could count... at least I think they were women
-- Hugh Hefner

#Thinking

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.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Home #Kissing #People

One of the things I've tried to do with my life is redefine the boundaries that I think are very limiting. I'm not suggesting that everybody should have three girlfriends, or necessarily have girlfriends living with them. I think there are many, many options to living your life.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Girlfriend #Thinking #Live Your Life

Living in the moment, thinking about the future, and staying connected to the past: That's what makes me feel whole.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Past #Thinking #Live In The Moment

It's hard to really compare new love and old love.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Old Love #Compare

I guess I'm the most successful man I know. I wouldn't trade places with anybody in the world.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Successful #Men #World

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.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Power #Wake Up #Realizing

I had a stroke in 1985... I called it a "stroke of luck." I said, "Life is like a train trip. You're looking out the window and everything is whipping past and you're not really seeing anything, and you need to get off the train and walk around a bit."
-- Hugh Hefner

#Past #Perspective #Luck

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.
-- Hugh Hefner

#Life #World #Littles