"First Rough Draft of History"
In April 1963, Graham delivered a speech to the overseas correspondents of Newsweek in London:
- "So let us today drudge on about our inescapably impossible task of providing every week a first rough draft of history that will never really be completed about a world we can never really understand…"
The phrase " first rough draft of history" has entered the vernacular. While this quote may have been popularized by Graham in this speech, and the phrase is often credited to him in this speech, these words are not original with him, nor with this speech, the phrase having been used repeatedly in the Post in the 1940s, and by Graham in the 1950s, with the earliest citation being 20 years, by Alan Barth in 1943, writing "News is only the first rough draft of history," and earlier expressions of similar sentiments dating at least to the 1900s (decade) – see Wikiquote article for details.
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Famous quotes containing the words draft of history, rough, draft and/or history:
“News is the first rough draft of history.”
—Philip L. Graham (1915–1963)
“Now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“News is the first rough draft of history.”
—Philip L. Graham (1915–1963)
“The best history is but like the art of Rembrandt; it casts a vivid light on certain selected causes, on those which were best and greatest; it leaves all the rest in shadow and unseen.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)