Quotes from Hugh Hefner

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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