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Peter Drucker

162 quotes

• “A man should never be appointed into a managerial position if his vision focuses on people's weaknesses rather than on their strengths.”

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

• “The better a man is, the more mistakes will he make - for the more new things he will try. I would never promote a man into a top level job who had not made mistakes, and big ones at that. Otherwise he is sure to be mediocre.”

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

• “It does not follow from the separation of planning and doing in the analysis of work that the planner and the doer should be two different people. It does not follow that the industrial world should be divided into two classes of people: a few who decide what is to be done, design the job, set the pace, rhythm and motions, and order others about; and the many who do what and as they are told.”

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

• “It does not matter whether the worker wants responsibility or not, ...The enterprise must demand it of him.”

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

• “The fundamental reality for every worker, from sweeper to executive vice-president, is the eight hours or so that he spends on the job. In our society of organizations, it is the job through which the great majority has access to achievement, to fulfillment, and to community.”

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

• “- A manager sets objectives - A manager organizes - A manager motivates and communicates - A manager, by establishing yardsticks, measures - A manager develops people.”

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

• “The company is not and must never claim to be home, family, religion, life or fate for the individual. It must never interfere in his private life or his citizenship. He is tied to the company through a voluntary and cancellable employment contract, not through some mystical or indissoluble bond.”

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

• “Capitalism is being attacked not because it is inefficient or misgoverned but because it is cynical. And indeed a society based on the assertion that private vices become public benefits cannot endure, no matter how impeccable its logic, no matter how great its benefits.”

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

• “We no longer even understand the question whether change is by itself good or bad, ...We start out with the axiom that it is the norm. We do not see change as altering the order... We see change as being order itself--indeed the only order we can comprehend today is a dynamic, a moving, a changing one.”

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

• “An organization belongs on a sick list when promotion becomes more important to its people than accomplishment of their job they are in. It is sick when it is more concerned with avoiding mistakes than with taking risks, with counteracting the weaknesses of its members than with building on their strength. But it is sick also when "good human relations" become more important than performance and achievement.”

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

• “The moment people talk of "implementing" instead of "doing," and of "finalizing" instead of "finishing," the organization is already running a fever.”

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

• “The individual needs the return to spiritual values, for he can survive in the present human situation only by reaffirming that man is not just a biological and psychological being but also a spiritual being, that is creature, and existing for the purposes of his Creator and subject to Him.”

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

• “In the political, the social, the economic, even the cultural sphere, the revolutions of our time have been revolutions "against" rather than revolutions "for"… On the whole throughout this period the man--or party--that stood for doing the positive has usually cut a pathetic figure; well meaning but ineffectual, civilized but unrealistic, he was suspect alike to [by both] the ultras of destruction and the ultras of preservation and restoration.”

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

• “[T]hroughout the ages to be educated meant to be unproductive.... our word "school" - and its equivalent in all European languages - derives from a Greek word meaning "leisure.”

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

• “Tomorrow everybody - or practically everybody - will have had the education of the upper class of yesterday, and will expect equivalent opportunities. That is why we face the problem of making every kind of job meaningful and capable of satisfying every educated man.”

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

• “The arts alone give direct access to experience. To eliminate them from education - or worse, to tolerate them as cultural ornaments - is antieducational obscurantism. It is foisted on us by the pedants and snobs of Hellenistic Greece who considered artistic performance fit only for slaves...”

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

• “In book subjects a student can only do a student's work. All that can be measured is how well he learns, rather than how well he performs. All he can show is promise.”

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

• “No matter how deeply wedded one may be to the free enterprise system (and I, for one, am wedded for life), one has to accept the need for positive government; one has to consider government action on a sizable scale as desirable rather than as a necessary evil.”

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

• “Communism is evil. Its driving forces are the deadly sins of envy and hatred.”

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

• “Through systematic terror, through indoctrination, through systematic manipulation of stimulus, reward, and punishment, we can today break man and convert him into brute animal... The first step toward survival is therefore to make government legitimate again by attempting to deprive it of these powers... by international action to ban such powers.”

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

• “Morale in an organization does not mean that "people get along together"; the test is performance not conformance.”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) first seen 1966 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Effective Executive (1966)

• “Large organizations cannot be versatile. A large organization is effective through its mass rather than through its agility. Fleas can jump many times their own height, but not an elephant.”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) first seen 1969 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Age of Discontinuity (1969)

• “The world economy is not yet a community--not even an economic community...Yet the existence of the "global shopping center" is a fact that cannot be undone. The vision of an economy for all will not be forgotten again.”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) first seen 1969 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Age of Discontinuity (1969)

• “If "socialism" is defined as "ownership of the means of production"--and this is both the orthodox and the only rigorous definition--then the United States is the first truly Socialist country.”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) first seen 1976 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Pension Fund Revolution (1976)

• “Whenever anything is being accomplished, it is being done, I have learned, by a monomaniac with a mission.”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) first seen 1979 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Adventures of a Bystander (1979) (Autobiography)

• “Few companies that installed computers to reduce the employment of clerks have realized their expectations; most computer users have found that they now need more, and more expensive clerks, even though they call them "operators" or "programmers.”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) first seen 1048 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Drucker cited in: William White (1981) Library journal. Volume 106, Nr 1-12. p. 1048

• “All economic activity is by definition "high risk." And defending yesterday--that is, not innovating--is far more risky than making tomorrow.”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) first seen 1985 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Innovations and Entrepreneurship (1985)

• “Ideas are somewhat like babies--they are born small, immature, and shapeless. They are promise rather than fulfillment. In the innovative company executives do not say, "This is a damn-fool idea." Instead they ask, "What would be needed to make this embryonic, half-baked, foolish idea into something that makes sense, that is an opportunity for us?”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) first seen 1986 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Frontiers of Management (1986)

• “The citizen of today in every developed country is typically an employee. He works for one of the institutions. He looks to them for his livelihood. He looks to them for his opportunities. He looks to them for access to status and function in society, as well as for personal fulfillment and achievement.”

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

• “Without institution there is no management. But without management there is no institution.”

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

• “We will have to learn to lead people rather then to contain them.”

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

• “A primary task of management in the developed countries in the decades ahead will be to make knowledge productive.”

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

• “A management decision is irresponsible if it risks disaster this year for the sake of a grandiose future.”

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

• “The only thing we know about the future is that it is going to be different.”

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

• “The prevailing economic theory of business enterprise and behavior, the maximization of profit—which is simply a complicated way of phrasing the old saw of buying cheap and selling dear—may adequately explain how Richard Sears operated. But it cannot explain how Sears, Roebuck or any other business enterprise operates, nor how it should operate. The concept of profit maximization is, in fact, meaningless.”

  Peter Drucker (1909–2005) first seen 1986 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: p. 59 (1986 ; 45)

• “Profit is not a cause but a result-”

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

• “Success always obsoletes the very behavior that achieved it.”

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

• “The basic definition of the business and of its purpose and mission have to be translated into objectives.”

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

• “It is better to pick the wrong priority than none at all.”

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

• “Decisions exist only in the present.”

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

• “The fault is in the system and not in the men.”

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

• “A success that has outlived its usefulness may, in the end, be more damaging than failure.”

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

• “One cannot hire a hand; the whole man always comes with it.”

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

• “Frederick W. Taylor was the first man in recorded history who deemed work deserving of systematic observation and study. On Taylor's 'scientific management' rests, above all, the tremendous surge of affluence in the last seventy-five years which has lifted the working masses in the developed countries well above any level recorded before, even for the well-to-do. Taylor, though the Isaac Newton (or perhaps the Archimedes) of the science of work, laid only first foundations, however. Not much has been added to them since – even though he has been dead all of sixty years.”

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

• “As with every phenomenon of the objective universe, the first step toward understanding work is to analyze it.”

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

• “Loafing" is easy, but "leisure" is difficult.”

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

• “The first step toward making the worker achieving is to make work productive.”

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

• “When Henry Ford said, "The customer can have a car in any color as long as it's black," he was not joking.”

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

• “A tool is not necessarily better because it is bigger. A tool is best if it does the job required with a minimum of effort, with a minimum of complexity, and with a minimum of power.”

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

• “An employer has no business with a man's personality. Employment is a specific contract calling for a specific performance... Any attempt to go beyond that is usurpation. It is immoral as well as an illegal intrusion of privacy. It is abuse of power. An employee owes no "loyalty," he owes no "love" and no "attitudes"--he owes performance and nothing else. .... The task is not to change personality, but to enable a person to achieve and to perform.”

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

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