Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
After my stroke I put down much of the luggage of my life. I didn't have to prove anything anymore - in business, in my personal life or whatever. And now, as I work on my autobiography, I enjoy looking back, seeing the connections, the causes and effects of my life.
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.
We have a tremendous opportunity to try to start solving some of our overwhelming problems with population related environment, related to the hatred that exists between countries and religions, so we have a tremendous opportunity, but the dangers are very clearly there.
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.
One of the things I've tried to do with my life is redefine the boundaries that I think are very limiting. I'm not suggesting that everybody should have three girlfriends, or necessarily have girlfriends living with them. I think there are many, many options to living your life.
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.
I think that from the very beginning it wasn't simply, what made Playboy so popular was not simply the naked ladies, what made the magazine so popular was, there was a point of view in the magazine, that you couldn't run nude pictures without some kind of rational that they were art.
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.
Did you know that I almost called the magazine Stag Party and the symbol was originally going to be a stag? I changed my mind just before we went to press, thank God. Somehow, it wouldn't have been the same. Can you imagine a chain of key clubs staffed by beautiful girls wearing antlers?
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.
The religious heritage sort of suggests implicitly and explicitly that you pay your dues and you get your reward later on, that's a little inconsistent with the notion of personal, happiness. I am a strong believer in a set of values that are rooted in the notion of happiness and personal fulfillment.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Americans are fascinated by our sexuality and frightened by it. And during the Reagan and Bush era you got an entire decade of anti-sex government. Sex is not the enemy. It is the beginning of civilization, family and tribe. Sex can be twisted and exploited, but in its most essential form, it's the best part of who we are. And it frightens us.
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.
Women have traditionally been either put on pedestals or damned as the source of all sexual temptation and sin. These are two sides of the same coin, since both place women in a nonhuman role. Playboy has opposed these warped sexual values and, in so doing, helped women step down from their pedestals and enjoy their natural sexuality as much as men.
After world war all we got was a lot of conformity, and conservatism and when I was in college at the university of Illinois the skirt lengths dropped instead of going up as they had during the roaring twenties and I knew that was a very bad sign, and it is symbolic and reflective of a very repressive time, and some of that was laid the feet of the cold war.
Over the course of my life I've had more than my fair share of romantic relationships with wonderful women, many moved on to live happy, healthy, and productive lives, and I'm pleased to say remain dear friends today. Sadly, there are a few who have chosen to rewrite history in an attempt to stay in the spotlight. I guess, as the old saying goes: You can't win 'em all!
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 our society is fragmented. Messages regarding human sexuality have always been mixed in America. We are a schizophrenic nation. We were founded initially by Puritans, who escaped repression only to establish their own. Then the founding fathers gave us the Constitution to separate church and state. But the one thing that got left out of all those laws was human sexuality.
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.
With the end of communism and the opening of Third World markets, the potential for Playboy is huge. It has been said that the two most famous trademarks in the world are Coca-Cola and the Playboy bunny rabbit. There is certainly no one else in our area that represents the American dream in this particular kind of way. That rabbit means economic freedom, personal freedom and political freedom. That potential is unlimited.
Nothing goes on forever. I think that's one of the illusions of life. When I talk about my life being an extension of my dreams and fantasies, there's a tendency to think of them as immature. I live in a mature world. The majority of the people in this society live with delusions and illusions much more irrational and hurtful than mine. They deal with mortality, with fantasies relating to heaven and hell, and they don't really deal with their problems at all.
My life has been devoted to trying to bring a little more understanding to human sexuality - not just in society, but also inside myself. The struggle has been internal as well as external. One of the reasons that I have such tremendous satisfaction at this point in my life is because I know I've made a difference. I've made a difference in a way that really matters to me. I see a lot of terrible things going on in the world, but there are some good things going on too, and I feel I've been a part of that. I really do feel I have been on the side of the angels.
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.