Hugh Hefner Quotes

I was raised in a truly typical Midwestern home with a lot of repression. My life, and the creation of Playboy, were a response to that repression.

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.

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.

But obviously, things have changed in many ways since the '50s, when the show is started, in terms of sexuality, and how much access we have to images of it and information about it. But, the same problems always apply. It doesn't matter whether we know a lot more about sex now or if there's a lot more access to it. The same problems of intimacy, of dealing with other people, of connecting and being vulnerable with other people, which is what the show is ultimately about, still applies now, I think.

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

I was surprised by my daughter's generation and how they were rebelling against the '70s idea that sex was perfect and it should be sought.

As far as bands doing that in a way where they think they're going to fight the government, the only people they're really hurting is the fans.

The Sexual Revolution is a complete rebellion against authority, natural and supernatural, even against the body and its needs, its natural functions of child bearing. This is not reverence for life, it is a great denial and more resembles Nihilism than the revolution that they think they are furthering.

Sexual morality - as society in its extreme form, the American, defines it - is contemptible. I advocate an incomparably freer sexual life.

I'm very comfortable with my own body. I come from Broadway — everybody's naked on Broadway. I like to think of myself as more granola. I'm not going to run around naked or anything like that unless I'm at my own home. Today, I walked into my backyard and was standing out there naked for a while. Don't tell: my neighbors will freak out!

I think perhaps we manage our revolutions much more quietly in this country.

The love that previously dared not speak its name has now grown hoarse from screaming it.

I've never believed it's really so important that you conform to the ways of the system in order to beat the system. I think that the system follows a great deal.

I'm writing what I want to write. But it's almost an act of rebellion on my part. Because as a person, I've always wanted to be very likeable, and I think that's a horrible thing, particularly for women. You're always like, "Oh, I hope I didn't hurt anyone's feelings. I hope they like me!" And that's just so stupid.

Radical feminism, male lesbians, transsexuals, musical condoms with suspenders, and lotsa drummers drumming are all manifestations of a political agenda with roots in the 1960s. This is all fruit we are reaping from the sexual revolution.

I don't think poverty provides that much of an obstacle to education as one thinks. I think the bigger obstacle to education is the fact that it's a very hard thing to do for a first-generation schoolgoer. Because not to have parents at home who can help you, motivate you, is a problem even when the parents are in the abstract very keen on children being educated.

It is better sometimes not to follow great reformers of abuses beyond the threshold of their homes.

I think the idea is that every person has to live for his or her own life and then make the choice to share it with other people. Maybe that is what makes people "participate.

The object is for everyone to do their own thing, but the thing is to make one's thing the Revolution.

The signs of the Vietnam War protestors said "Make Love not War!" It didn't seem to me that they were capable of either.

I think everybody should be able to do anything they want and let roving bands of people punish each other for things they don't agree with. People with no underwear doing anything they want. Wouldn't that be fun? You wouldn't need television.

I don't really have a life philosophy; my thing is just rebelling against pretty much organized religion. That is my main thing, because personally I think it's a crutch for people that are too weak to get through life on their own. I'm the kind of guy that says if I don't see it, then it doesn't work. And nobody can show me God.

The sexual revolution transformed the American West: Now even cowboys can get laid.

The world is always childish, and with each new gewgaw of a revolution or new constitution that it finds, thinks it shall never cry any more.

We won't dispassionately investigate or rationally debate which drugs do what damage and whether or how much of that damage is the result of criminalization. We'd rather work ourselves into a screaming fit of puritanism and then go home and take a pill.