Katharine Graham Quotes & Sayings

I believe ... that education is not only the most important societal problem but the most interesting. — Katharine Graham

There seems to me nothing very bad about a nation's capital having good intentions - and when the intentions are magnificent, so much the better. — Katharine Graham

In Washington, the public and the private intertwine in such a way that they can't be easily separated. This is the city where the personal and the political are most closely linked. — Katharine Graham

There are some things the general public does not need to know and shouldn't. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets, and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows. — Katharine Graham

To me, working is a form of sustenance, like food or water, and nearly as essential. — Katharine Graham

Although at the time I didn't realize what was happening, I was unable to make a decision that might displease those around me. For years, whatever directive I may have issued ended with the phrase, 'If it's all right with you.' If I thought I'd done anything to make someone unhappy, I'd agonize. — Katharine Graham

No one can avoid aging, but aging productively is something else. — Katharine Graham

There is a saying about relationships in Washington: If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog. — Katharine Graham

Those first few years of marriage, before the war interrupted all our lives, Phil and I had a very happy time. I grew up considerably, mostly thanks to him. — Katharine Graham

It took me a while to learn that certain people may have important skills that are not always blazingly apparent. Gradually I came to realize - slow as I may have been - that what mattered was performance, that sometimes people might have to be helped to develop, and that it takes all kinds to make an organization run properly. — Katharine Graham

My mother seemed to undermine so much of what I did, subtly belittling my choices and my activities in light of her greater, more important ones. — Katharine Graham

The image of me as someone who likes or can deal with a fight is wrong. Some people enjoy competition and dustups, and I wish I did, but I don't. But once you have started down a path, then I think you have to move forward. You can't give up. — Katharine Graham

I always thought if you worked hard enough and tried hard enough, things would work out. I was wrong. — Katharine Graham

But though he lacked the gift of intimacy, in many ways his supportive love still came through to me. He somehow conveyed his belief in me without ever articulating it, and that was the single most sustaining thing in my life. — Katharine Graham

The editorial - written by a liberated man - suggested legal and social remedies but concluded that perhaps we can begin with the ultra-radical notion that a woman is a human being. — Katharine Graham

Being a woman in control of a company - even a small private company, as ours was then - was so singular and surprising in those days that I necessarily stood out. In 1963, and for the first several years of my working life, my situation was certainly unique. — Katharine Graham

I remember the Washington in which I grew up as a genuine small town. Maybe this is true for everyone, that we all feel that the times in which we grew up were simpler, less complex. — Katharine Graham

There have been two periods in my lifetime when the excitement of government and of public issues drew to Washington many of the bright young people graduating from colleges and law schools. These were essentially the Roosevelt and the Kennedy years. — Katharine Graham

Left alone, no matter at what age or under what circumstance, you have to remake your life. — Katharine Graham

Truth and news are not the same thing. — Katharine Graham

The longer I live, the more I observe that carrying around anger is the most debilitating to the person who bears it. — Katharine Graham

In my first year or so at the 'Post,' I began to write with some frequency on the least important issues - so-called light editorials. The titles themselves are revealing of just how light: 'On Being a Horse,' 'Brains and Beauty,' 'Mixed Drinks,' 'Lou Gehrig,' and 'Spotted Fever.' — Katharine Graham

The Montessori Method- learning by doing-once again became my stock in trade ... — Katharine Graham

The nicest thing you did was to take me seriously when a lot of people wouldn't have, but not too seriously, which was just right. — Katharine Graham

One speaker after another used to start his presentation coyly by saying, "Lady and gentlemen," or "Gentlemen and Mrs. Graham," always with slight giggles or snickers. — Katharine Graham

When in 1969 I became publisher of the 'Washington Post' as well as president of the company, my plate was fuller than ever. I had partly worked myself into the job but not, except for rare occasions, taken hold. I had acquired some sense of business but still relied on others more than most company presidents did. — Katharine Graham

The organization that I joined when I went to work, the trade association called the Bureau of Advertising, became the first of many over the years in which I was the only woman. — Katharine Graham

Alice Roosevelt Longworth was only a few years older than my mother but outlived her by a decade, dying in 1980. From the time they met, in 1917, they were lifelong friends of sorts, though each was a bit wary of the other. — Katharine Graham

I think heroes and heroines are both vulgar and boring and usually lead that kind of lives. But when you tell people you were just doing your own thing in an admittedly escalated situation, they say, Ah, yes, etc. — Katharine Graham

I truly believed that other people in my position didn't make mistakes; I couldn't see that everybody makes them, even people with great experience. — Katharine Graham

Mountain climbing was one of Mother's favorite occupations, but she never succeeded in inculcating this passion in any of us. — Katharine Graham

Whatever power I exert is collegial. — Katharine Graham

I certainly didn't understand something that I learned later from Dr. Kay Jamison, the author of An Unquiet Mind, about her own manic-depression. She has written that it is a lethal illness, particularly if left untreated, or wrongly treated. — Katharine Graham

In large families, it seems it is hardest to be either the first or the last child. That was certainly true in ours. — Katharine Graham

Dean Acheson was one of the very best and brightest of the men who ever came to Washington. — Katharine Graham

I didn't really want deadlines and editorial work. I wanted something mechanical and eight hours a day. So I went to work, thinking it was easy - ha, ha - on the complaint desk at the circulation department. — Katharine Graham

My position in the family turned out to be a lucky one; I bore neither the brunt of my mother's newness to parenthood nor the force of her middle-aged traumas, as my younger sister, Ruth, did. — Katharine Graham

Some questions don't have answers, which is a terribly difficult lesson to learn. — Katharine Graham

Who is going to influence whom in the new association? Warren may have entered the ocean in California, but I am sitting down in Virginia with Ben Graham's beginner's book and "How to Read a Financial Report" by someone called Merrill, Lynch, Pierce, Fenner and Smith. I am told I have to finish Ben Graham very soon because Warren is unwilling to pay the small fine involved in having the book out of the Omaha public library too long. — Katharine Graham

Potomac School proved to be my first big adjustment - one that helped me with a basic lesson of growing up: learning to get along in whatever world one is deposited. — Katharine Graham

So few grown women like their lives. — Katharine Graham

The power is to set the agenda. What we print and what we don't print matter a lot. — Katharine Graham

I always liked Barbara Howar and admired her spunk. I know that she considered me - and Alice Roosevelt Longworth - an exception to her negative feelings about Washington widows and single women, whom she basically found dispensable. — Katharine Graham

I adopted the assumption of many of my generation that women were intellectually inferior to men, that we were not capable of governing, leading, managing anything but our homes and our children. — Katharine Graham

I love Martha's Vineyard, where I have had a house for thirty years. I have loved visiting countries around the world. But I always come home to Washington. — Katharine Graham

What I essentially did was to put one foot in front of the other, shut my eyes and step off the ledge. The surprise was that I landed on my feet. — Katharine Graham

She has told me that what she found most destructive about minority-group psychology "is that one comes to share the conviction of the majority: that one is less able, less intelligent, less educable, less worthy of responsibility." My sentiments, exactly. — Katharine Graham

For more than eight decades, Washington has been my hometown. My whole orientation is toward this place. — Katharine Graham

If one is rich and one's a woman, one can be quite misunderstood. — Katharine Graham

To me, involvement with news is absolutely inebriating. It's what makes my life exciting. — Katharine Graham

The press these days should be rather careful about its role. We may have acquired some tendencies about over-involvement that we had better overcome. — Katharine Graham

News is what someone wants suppressed. Everything else is advertising. — Katharine Graham

It's hard to remake decisions and even harder to rethink nondecisions. Sometimes you don't really decide, you just move forward, and that is what I did - moved forward blindly and mindlessly into a new and unknown life. — Katharine Graham

He, who hated to hurt people, had to begin to deal with all the hurt his actions had wrought - for me, for the children, for Robin, for himself. — Katharine Graham

Mother set impossibly high standards for us, creating tremendous pressures and undermining our ability to accomplish whatever modest aims we may have set for ourselves. — Katharine Graham

I believed - and believe - that capitalism works best for a freedom-loving society, that it brings more prosperity to more people than any other social-economic system, but that somehow we have to take care of people. — Katharine Graham

One of my principal childhood memories is hearing one of the Liszt Hungarian Rhapsodies waft throughout the house. — Katharine Graham

If we had failed to pursue the facts as far as they led, we would have denied the public any knowledge of an unprecedented scheme of political surveillance and sabotage. — Katharine Graham

I mean, I think everybody in the world, all the young people in the world, went to journalism school and wanted to investigate everything. And I think they overdid it. I think that you have to investigate things, you have to e skeptical, but you shouldn't be vengeful. You have to be fair and you have to be careful. — Katharine Graham

The more subtle inheritance of my strange childhood was the feeling, which we all shared to some extent, of believing we were never quite going about things correctly. Had I said the right thing? Had I worn the right clothes? Was I attractive? These questions were unsettling and self-absorbing, even overwhelming at times, and remained so throughout much of my adult life, until, at last, I grew impatient with dwelling on the past. — Katharine Graham

At least through most of the 1960s, I basically lived in a man's world, hardly speaking to a woman all day except to the secretaries. But I was almost totally unaware of myself as an oddity and had no comprehension of the difficulties faced by working women in our organization and elsewhere. — Katharine Graham

One doesn't soon forget the natural beauty of Washington, although those of us who live here do sometimes take it for granted. — Katharine Graham

The only way I can describe the extent of my anxiety is to say that I felt as if I were pregnant with a rock. — Katharine Graham

Family ownership provides the independence that is sometimes required to withstand governmental pressure and preserve freedom of the press. — Katharine Graham

When it comes to Washington, most people tend to think first of politics. But Washington is also a geographic and physical place. It is, for instance, one of the few cities of the world where you can talk endlessly about trees. — Katharine Graham