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Peter Drucker

162 quotes

• “This is a political book... It has a political purpose: to strengthen the will to maintain freedom against the threat of its abandonment in favor of totalitarianism.”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “As for the explanation that fascism is a last desperate attempt of capitalism to delay the socialist revolution, it simply is not true. It is not true that ‘big business’ promoted fascism. On the contrary, both in Italy and in Germany the proportion of fascist sympathizers and backers was smallest in the industrial and financial classes. It is equally untrue that ‘big business’ profits from fascism; of all the classes it probably suffers most from totalitarian economics and Wehrwirtschaft.”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “[T]he ‘total state’ of fascism is not a political alignment within the existing political and social setup, but that it is a revolution which, like all revolutions, works from without.”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Of course, every revolution repudiates what went on before and considers itself a conscious break with the past; it is only posterity that sees, or imagines it sees, the historical continuity. Fascism, however, goes much further in its negation of the past than any earlier political movement, because it makes this negation its main platform. What is even more important, it denies simultaneously ideas and tendencies which are in themselves antithetic. It is antiliberal, but it is also anticonservative; antireligious and antiatheist; anticapitalist and antisocialist; antiwar and antipacifist...”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The Nazi agitator whom, many years ago, I heard proclaim to a wildly cheering peasants’ meeting: ‘We don’t want lower bread prices, we don’t want higher bread prices, we don’t want unchanged bread prices—we want National-Socialist bread prices,’ came nearer explaining fascism than anybody I have heard since.”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “[J]ustification of power must be the central problem. For it is through this problem alone that freedom and equality—or... justice—can be projected into the social and political reality... But to fascism the problem does not even exist except as a ridiculous relic of "Jewish liberalism.”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Equally striking is the fact that racial anti-Semitism was not taken seriously even by the great majority of Nazis. ‘It is just a catchword to attract voters’ was a standing phrase which everybody repeated and believed, and that I took it seriously was more than once regarded as definite proof of my stupidity and gullibility.”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Fascism is the result of the collapse of Europe's spiritual and social order... catastrophes broke through the everyday routine which makes men accept existing forms, institutions and tenets as unalterable natural laws. They suddenly exposed the vacuum behind the facade of society.”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Capitalism as a social order and as a creed is the expression of the belief in economic progress as leading toward the freedom and equality of the individual in a free and open society. Marxism expects this society to result from the abolition of private profit. Capitalism expects the free and equal society to result from the enthronement of private profit as supreme ruler of social behavior...”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “There is an unbroken chain of opposition to the introduction of economic freedom and to the capitalist autonomy of the economic sphere... In every case the opposition could only be overcome - peacefully or by force - because of the promise of capitalism to establish equality... That this promise was an illusion we all know.”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “With Christianity, freedom and equality became the two basic concepts of Europe; they are themselves Europe.”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “[The masses] … must turn their hopes toward a miracle. In the depths of their despair reason cannot be believed, truth must be false, and lies must be truth. "Higher bread prices," "lower bread prices," "unchanged bread prices" have all failed. The only hope lies in a kind of bread price which is none of these, which nobody has ever seen before, and which belies the evidence of one's reason.”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “In addition, profits are so completely subordinated in Germany and Italy to requirements of a militarily conceived national interest and of full employment that the maintenance of the profit principle is purely theoretical. Profits have lost their autonomy as an independent, not to say the supreme, goal of economic activity.”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “There is a definite trend in Italy and Germany to eliminate profit participation and the ownership rights of nonmanaging partners and shareholders.”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The regimentation of agriculture was in both fascist countries the first, and for a considerable time the most drastic, intervention in the free play of economic forces. In either country, and especially in Germany, the threat of the industrial revolution in agriculture had reached a point at which government intervention in the social structure of farming was entirely unavoidable.”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “[T]he Western European democracies... will be forced into totalitarianism unless they produce a noneconomic society striving for the freedom and equality of the individual.”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Those German businessmen and industrialists, who, lured by the denunciation of fascism as antisocialist, concluded that it must be procapitalist, have since learned the better. But whereas originally the Right in France and England favored resistance to fascism, the slogan of the inevitable Russo-German war has made a large section favor the fascist advance, so that ‘both monsters devour each other.’”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Actually, the specter of the Russo-German alliance is already the nightmare of every European government, however much they protest their belief in the inevitability of a Russo-German war. And what is only a nightmare today may be reality tomorrow. The two regimes will have to come together because they are similar ideologically and socially. That the European Left has not dared to admit this is understandable. By conceding that Soviet Russia is as fascist a state as Germany, they would have conceded that socialism must fail and would have abandoned themselves.”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “[T]he enemy of totalitarian Nazism is not in the East. It is not Russian communism. The complete collapse of the belief in the attainability of freedom and equality through Marxist socialism has forced Russia to travel the same road toward a totalitarian, purely negative, noneconomic society of unfreedom and inequality which Germany has been following… During the last few years Russia has therefore been forced to adopt one purely totalitarian and fascist principle after the other; not, it must be emphasized, because of a "Stalinist conspiracy," but because there was no other possibility.”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Fascism is the stage reached after communism has proved an illusion. And it has been proven as much of an illusion in Stalinist Russia as it proven an illusion in pre-Hitler Germany. Communism in anything but name was abandoned in Russia when the Five-Year Plan was substituted for the New Economic Policy (NEP) after Lenin’s death.”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “No society can function as a society, unless it gives the individual member social status and function, and unless the decisive social power is legitimate.”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “In the modern corporation the decisive power, that of the managers, is derived from no one but the managers themselves controlled by nobody and nothing and responsible to no one. It is in the most literal sense unfounded, unjustified, uncontrolled and irresponsible power.”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Unless the power of the corporation can be organized on an accepted principle of legitimacy, it will... be taken over by a Central government...”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “We have only one alternative: either to build a functioning industrial society or see freedom itself disappear in anarchy and tyranny.”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Unless we realize that the essence of Nazism is also an attempt to solve a universal problem of Western civilization - that of the industrial society - and that the basic principles on which the Nazis base this attempt are also in no way confined to Germany, we do not know what we fight for or what we fight against... The war is being fought for the structure of industrial society--its basic principles, its purposes, and its institutions.”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Freedom rests on ethical decisions. But the political sphere deals with power. ...Individually, power may well be the goal of personal ambition. But socially it is a servant; its organization is only a means to a social end. ...[P]ower distributes rank and determines relations within society; it is a means of internal organization. But the end of society is always an ethical purpose.”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “[F]reedom cannot be legislated into existence—though it can be legislated out of existence if the necessary minimum of free government is destroyed. ...[F]reedom rests upon beliefs and social institutions and not upon laws. ...[L]egislative enactment does not create or determine institutional structure, social beliefs and human nature.”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “[T]he basic decisions are... about aims... what is desirable... the greater good or the lesser evil in the case of conflicting aims... what sacrifice we are willing to make for a certain achievement, and at what point the sacrifice outweighs the advantages.”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “There can be no freedom if one man or one group of men... is assumed... inherently perfect or perfectible. Its claim to perfection or perfectibility is a claim to absolute rule.”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “There can... be no freedom if a man-made absolute is set up as the one and exclusive goal of human endeavor, or as the one and exclusive rule of individual or social conduct. The man-made absolute may be peace or war, economic progress or security, the Nordic Race or the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Each of these must destroy freedom if it is set up as The Absolute.”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “If war production should remain the only way out of a long-term depression, industrial society would be reduced to the choice between suicide through total war or suicide through total depression.”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) first seen 1961 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: p. 269. Note: compare Dwight Eisenhower's January, 1961 Farewell Speech

• “For if this country—or any other of the great powers—were to make its defense program a function of its domestic employment situation, it would become impossible to conduct a constructive and well-thought out foreign policy or to develop any lasting collaboration.”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) first seen 1945 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Concept of the Corporation (1945)

• “[W]e are all learning fast that we have to respect each other's basic beliefs and institutions, however much we must dislike them. If there is one lesson to this war, it is that the attempt to impose one's own system on the world, such as was made by both the Germans and the Japanese, must end not only in total world-wide conflict, but in the defeat and destruction of the country that makes the attempt.”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “[C]ollaboration between... divergent systems is possible... only as long as both are stable. ...International security is ...based upon the internal political and social security of each of the Great Powers.”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “[C]hronic unemployment is a denial of citizenship, a destruction of the rationality of our society, and a sign that we are socially incapable of mastering our economic tools. Reasonably full employment... is... a prerequisite to internal stability. ...[F]ailure to stabilize our economy would be the most severe threat to international order.”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “It is not enough for the economist in a free society to be a good economic craftsman; he must also think and act as a citizen.”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “[I]n a free society each individual has a responsibility towards the beliefs of his society—a responsibility on which all the rights and duties of citizenship are founded.”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “[W]e have been forced to put a major emphasis on the acquisition of technical knowledge.”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “[T]he nineteenth century was under the illusion that citizenship can take care of itself. It thought that a free society was "natural" and... would maintain itself by its own momentum. ..."[A]utomatic progress" would preserve liberty. ...[T]hese beliefs were false... they were destructive. They are not... the source and origin of Hitlerism, but they greatly facilitated its rise.”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Today we know that a free society is not the product of nature, but of man; that it is not self-maintaining and self-winding, but demands the vigilant and constant support of responsible citizens... freedom is not inevitable and easy... but the product of a long, hard struggle of man's reason and man's faith that has to be fought over and won again by every generation.”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “It is this country today which has to prove—to a skeptical world and in constant competition—that it is possible to found a strong and stable modern industrial nation on the concept of citizenship in a free society. Hence the central task in this country, the task with the attainment of which we will stand or fall, is education.”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “We need in this modern world... an incredible number of very highly trained technicians and professional men... But nothing will be gained unless [they] are also educated as citizens... to know about the ends, the beliefs, the purposes, to... which their craft and skill is to contribute... about the basic issues which... every generation of free men has had to decide... [I]t is the liberal arts... that is our lighthouse in the dark and uncharted waters of the postwar world.”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “We still think and talk of the basic problems of an industrial society as problems that can be solved by changing the "system," that is the superstructure of political organization. Yet the real problems lie within the [industrial] enterprise. On the contrary, it is the solution of the problems of the enterprise that will shape the system under which we live.”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The large industrial enterprise is... the representative institution of an industrial society. It determines the individual's view of his society.”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The major incentive to productivity and efficiency are social and moral rather than financial.”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “What the worker needs is to see the plant as if he were a manager. Only thus can he see his part; from his part he cannot reach the whole. This "seeing" is not a matter of information, training courses, conducted plant tours, or similar devices. What is needed is the actual experience of the whole in and through the individual's work.”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “That the government's power under the Taft-Hartley Act to stop a strike by injunction so clearly strengthens the hand of the employer—even though it is used only when a strike threatens the national health, welfare, or safety—is a grave blemish and explains much of union resistance to the Act.”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “There is only one valid definition of a business purpose: to create a customer.”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Free enterprise cannot be justified as being good for business. It can be justified only as being good for society.”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The days of the 'intuitive' manager are numbered.”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) first seen 2005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: p. 93, cited in Henry Mintzberg (2005) Managers Not MBAs (2005). p. 10

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