I think everyone should get married. I just took a little longer than usual.
— Hugh Hefner
Sex, and the attraction between the sexes, does make the world go 'round.
When 'Penthouse' and 'Hustler' came along, they confused what I was trying to do. Before they arrived, we were perceived as a sophisticated men's magazine.
If I ever try to get married again, shoot me.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I guess I'm the most successful man I know. I wouldn't trade places with anybody in the world.
It's good to be selfish. But not so self-centered that you never listen to other people.
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.
It's hard to really compare new love and old love.
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.
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.
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.
I don't have dinner parties - I eat my dinner in bed.
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.
Men project their fantasies onto me; they live them through who they think I am.
'Playboy' was not a sex magazine as far as I was concerned. Sex was simply part of the total package; I was trying to bring sex into the fold of a healthy lifestyle.
The women's movement kind of came out of left field in the 1960s and 1970s when they turned on 'Playboy.'
With the rabbit as our emblem, when we got to the point in 1960 of opening the first Playboy Club... one of our executives suggested the possibility of a bunny costume. We tried it out, and I made some modifications - added the cuffs and the bow tie and collar - and the bunny was born.
What made the magazine so popular was, even before I started writing the philosophy, there was a point of view in the magazine.
My mother loaned me $1000. The first issue came out at the end of 1953. I knew I needed something original. I had a photographer shoot a 3D feature for the first issue and learned it would cost too much money. When the 3D thing turned out to be too expensive, at that same moment I came across the photos of Marilyn Monroe.
I separated ways from the American feminist movement when they became anti-sexual. I believe embracing sexuality is a part of what it means to be free.
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.
I got married before I found myself. People should find themselves before they get married.
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.
I'm actually a very moral guy.
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.
I'm never going to grow up. Staying young is what it is all about for me.
For me, the magazine was always the heart of what my life was all about, and the other half was living the life.
If you let society and your peers define who you are, you're the less for it.
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.
Even when I was young, I said age is largely a state of mind if you're healthy.
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. After World War Two, I expected something similar, a return to the period after the first war, but when the skirt lengths went down instead of up, I knew we were in big trouble.
Ageism is a variation of racism or sexism, all the other isms.
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.
Men's magazines in the period immediately after World War II were almost all outdoor-oriented. They were connected to some extent in the male bonding that came out of a war... And what I tried to create was a magazine for the indoor guy, but focused specifically on the single life: in other words, the period of bachelorhood before you settle down.
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 writing and cartooning and writing short stories from grade school on.
I'm not an active feminist: I'm an active humanist.
I guess you could say, I'm just a typical Methodist kid at heart.
Living in the moment, thinking about the future, and staying connected to the past: That's what makes me feel whole.
Sex is the driving force on the planet. We should embrace it, not see it as the enemy.
The Westwood Cemetery is just a few blocks from my home, and a number of my very dear friends are buried there.
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.
The difference between Marilyn Monroe and the early Pamela Anderson is not that great.
Being attacked by right-wing Christians did not bother me. Being attacked by liberal feminists did.
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.
