A biography for Hugh Hefnerhasn’t been written yet.
“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.”
“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.”
“Being attacked by right-wing Christians did not bother me. Being attacked by liberal feminists did.”
“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.”
“The women's movement kind of came out of left field in the 1960s and 1970s when they turned on 'Playboy.'”
“The interesting thing is how one guy, through living out his own fantasies, is living out the fantasies of so many other people.”
“Someone once asked, 'What's your best pickup line?' I said, 'My best pickup line is, 'Hi, my name is Hugh Hefner.'”
“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.”
“Sex, and the attraction between the sexes, does make the world go 'round.”
“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.”
“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.”
“For me, the magazine was always the heart of what my life was all about, and the other half was living the life.”
“I guess I'm the most successful man I know. I wouldn't trade places with anybody in the world.”
“The notion of the single man began in the 1950's. The idea of the bachelor as a separate life was new and obscure.”
“I got married before I found myself. People should find themselves before they get married.”
“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.”
“If I ever try to get married again, shoot me.”
“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.”
“Sex is the driving force on the planet. We should embrace it, not see it as the enemy.”