Hugh Hefner Quotations | Page 2

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."

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

As Ray Bradbury - a longtime contributor to Playboy - said a long time ago, a lot of people, when they're talking about the contents of the magazine, they don't see the forest. People don't see the other part of my life because they're too fascinated with the girls.

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.

There are many roads to Mecca.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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'm actually a very moral guy.

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.

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.

My life is an open book. With illustrations.

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.