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.

My parents are wonderful people and they instilled in me an idealism for which I'm grateful.

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

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.

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.

For me, the magazine was always the heart of what my life was all about, and the other half was living the life.

I felt quite frankly having been raised during the depression and looking back at the roaring twenties, the jazz age, which was a very magic timer in my mind because it was something that I had missed.