Hugh Hefner Quotes & Sayings

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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. — Hugh Hefner

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We indeed did and do own our own minds and bodies, and anything from church or state that limits that is inappropriate and inconsistent with the ... society that America is supposed to be. — Hugh Hefner

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

I have been married twice, and those were not the happiest times of my life. Part of the problem, quite frankly, is that when you get married, the romance disappears and the children arrive and the love is transferred. It shouldn't be that way, but too often it is transferred to the children. — Hugh Hefner

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

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

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

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

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

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

After world war all we got was a lot of conformity, and conservatism and when I was in college at the university of Illinois the skirt lengths dropped instead of going up as they had during the roaring twenties and I knew that was a very bad sign, and it is symbolic and reflective of a very repressive time, and some of that was laid the feet of the cold war. — Hugh Hefner

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

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

Life is bittersweet. Inside our heads, if we're lucky, we're the same kids as we were when we were young. — Hugh Hefner

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

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

I think that from the very beginning it wasn't simply, what made Playboy so popular was not simply the naked ladies, what made the magazine so popular was, there was a point of view in the magazine, that you couldn't run nude pictures without some kind of rational that they were art. — Hugh Hefner

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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. — Hugh Hefner

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

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. — Hugh Hefner

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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. — Hugh Hefner

We're separated by our myths. — Hugh Hefner

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

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

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

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

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

If a beautiful women expressed interest in me and my company, I don't really probe their motivations. Call me shallow. — Hugh Hefner

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

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

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

The religious heritage sort of suggests implicitly and explicitly that you pay your dues and you get your reward later on, that's a little inconsistent with the notion of personal, happiness. I am a strong believer in a set of values that are rooted in the notion of happiness and personal fulfillment. — Hugh Hefner

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

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

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. — Hugh Hefner

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

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

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

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

We have a tremendous opportunity to try to start solving some of our overwhelming problems with population related environment, related to the hatred that exists between countries and religions, so we have a tremendous opportunity, but the dangers are very clearly there. — Hugh Hefner

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

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

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

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

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

There are many roads to Mecca. — Hugh Hefner

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

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. — Hugh Hefner

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

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

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

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. — Hugh Hefner

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Over the course of my life I've had more than my fair share of romantic relationships with wonderful women, many moved on to live happy, healthy, and productive lives, and I'm pleased to say remain dear friends today. Sadly, there are a few who have chosen to rewrite history in an attempt to stay in the spotlight. I guess, as the old saying goes: You can't win 'em all! — Hugh Hefner

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

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