Hugh Hefner Quotes

The world changed on us. In a world where there were singles bars in every city, women weren't going to go out and hang out in a Playboy Club.

The outburst of sexual freedom in the '60s was bound to happen because the '50s were so oppressing. You had to live that way; women had to be like this - it was all locked into a false reality.

The separation of sex from emotion is at the very foundations of Western culture and civilization.

In society it is etiquette for ladies to have the best chairs and get handed things. In the home the reverse is the case. This is why ladies are more sociable than gentlemen.

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.

Americans have an interesting conundrum, a black and white line: You're on one side or the other of Puritanism or licentiousness. But that gray area where people abide, between their ears or on the Internet, needs to be fleshed out more in terms of permission granted. I think a lot of women are contained within the parentheses of shoulds and role-play. It's all about entitlement and history. It's all about upper-body strength - and exacting your will.

I never shared a room growing up because I was the only girl.

Sexuality poorly repressed unsettles some families; well repressed, it unsettles the whole world.

I grew up in a conservative household. That was the life of the time in Egypt: a conservative, middle-class household.

I'm essentially a momma's boy with a good education.

The feminine mystique has succeeded in burying millions of American women alive.

I grew up in society when lots of things were hidden, and they were not hidden just one way, but it was very complicated.

Society has taught us to suppress certain things and not do certain things.

I came from a middle-class family in Mexico, from a household full of women, in a country that is very machista.

It's possible that you have been told a time or 10 that you don't appreciate how tough your elders had it. It's true that, if you had been coming of age back in, say, 1960, you would probably be feeling more restricted, if only because you were doomed to spend your days in a skirt, nylon stockings and girdle.

There is a sense that women are more anchored than men in our society.

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.

The suffering of either sex - of the male who is unable, because of the way in which he was reared, to take the strong initiating or patriarchal role that is still demanded of him, or of the female who has been given too much freedom of movement as a child to stay placidly within the house as an adult - this suffering, this discrepancy, this sense of failure in an enjoined role, is the point of leverage for social change.

Grandmother belongs to the generation of women who were satisfied to have men retain their vices, if they removed their hats.

The institution of marriage in all societies is a pattern within which the strains put by civilization on males and females alike must be resolved, a pattern within which men must learn, in return for a variety of elaborate rewards, new forms in which sexual spontaneity is still possible, and women must learn to discipline their receptivity to a thousand other considerations.

In my experience, the psychological aspect of femininity tends to be more receptive and apathetic and delicate. I think that because the feminine is a bit quieter, we live in a masculine-dominated society. It is the front-forward force that runs the world. And that's not the fault of men by any means, that's just the way the world works.

Brigitte Bardot was one of the first women to be really modern and treat men like love objects, buying them and discarding them. I like that.

Men’s greatest weakness is their facade of strength, and women’s greatest strength is their facade of weakness.

There is no solid satisfaction in any career for a woman like myself. There is no home, no true freedom, no hope, no joy, no expectation for tomorrow, no contentment. I would rather cook a meal for a man and bring him his slippers and feel myself in the protection of his arms than have all the citations and awards and honors I have received worldwide, including the Ribbon of Legion of Honor and my property and my bank accounts. They mean nothing to me. And I am only one among the millions of sad women like myself.

In many developing countries, girls don't go to school. They stay home. They are at the water wells, bringing water back and forth to the village. Or they are doing chores, preparing meals, farming. Some cultures think girls and women shouldn't be educated, and those are very often the places where the treatment of women and girls is the worst.