Quotes from Katharine Graham

The end result of all this was that many of us, by middle age, arrived at the state we were trying most to avoid: we bored our husbands, who had done their fair share in helping reduce us to this condition, and they wandered off to younger, greener pastures.

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.

No longer would the Post write such lines as one identified by Chal Roberts in his history of the paper: "Sam Jones, 24, Negro, was arrested for larceny yesterday." Overnight, he eliminated "freebies"—trips paid for by the government and free tickets for anything. Also, after just a few weeks on the job, he called in the police reporter, Al Lewis, to ask if he was having parking

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.

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.

At the Post, we received a lot of unpleasant phone calls, many readers expressing the sentiment that they imagined we were all popping champagne corks to celebrate the result we had wanted from the beginning—in short, the "I-hope-you're-satisfied" school of thought.

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.

He was parsimonious in the extreme. Once, when we were together at an airport, I asked him for a dime to make a phone call. He started to walk some distance to get change for a quarter. "Warren," I exclaimed, "the quarter will do," and he sheepishly handed it over.

hand and working to unite the country, Nixon

Whatever power I exert is collegial.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Democracy depends on information circulating freely in society.

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

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.

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.

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.

The thing women must do to rise to power is to redefine their femininity. Once, power was considered a masculine attribute. In fact, power has no sex.

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.

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.

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.'