Peter F. Drucker: Trending quotes

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Peter F. Drucker: 360 quotes57 likes

“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 F. Drucker

Source: 1930s- 1950s, The Future of Industrial Man (1942), p. 64

“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 F. Drucker

Source: 1930s- 1950s, The End of Economic Man (1939), p. 246

“Absolute size by itself is no indicator of success and achievement, let alone of managerial competence. Being the right size is.”

Peter F. Drucker

Source: 1960s - 1980s, MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), Part 3, p. 672

“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 F. Drucker

Source: 1930s- 1950s, The Practice of Management (1954), p. 284

“Of these denials of European tradition one is especially important: that is the refutation of the demand that the political and social order and the authority set up under it have to justify themselves as benefiting their subjects. Hardly any other concept or idea of our past is held up to so much ridicule by fascism as that of the justification of power. ‘Power is its own justification’ is regarded as self-evident. Nothing shows better how far the totalitarian revolution has already gone than the general acceptance of this new maxim throughout Europe as a matter of course… Not even the most fanatical advocates of absolute monarchy would have dared to justify the sovereign otherwise.”

Peter F. Drucker

Source: 1930s- 1950s, The End of Economic Man (1939), pp. 14-15

“…human beings need community. If there are no communities available for constructive ends, there will be destructive, murderous communities… Only the social sector, that is, the nongovernmental, nonprofit organization, can create what we now need, communities for citizens… What the dawning 21st century needs above all is equally explosive growth of the nonprofit social sector in building communities in the newly dominant social environment, the city.”

Peter F. Drucker

Civilizing the City, Leader to Leader, No. 7 (Winter 1998)
1990s and later

“This society in which knowledge workers dominate is in danger of a new "class conflict" between the large minority of knowledge workers and the majority of workers who will make their livings through traditional ways, either by manual work… or by service work. The productivity of knowledge work - still abysmally low - will predictably become the economic challenge of the knowledge society. On it will depend the ability of the knowledge society to give decent incomes, and with them dignity and status, to non knowledge people.”

Peter F. Drucker

Source: 1990s and later, Managing in a Time of Great Change (1995), p. 205

“Political freedom is neither easy nor automatic, neither pleasant nor secure. It is the responsibility of the individual for the decisions of society as if they were his own decisions--as in moral truth and accountability they are.”

Peter F. Drucker

Source: 1930s- 1950s, The Future of Industrial Man (1942), p. 115

“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 F. Drucker

Source: 1930s- 1950s, Landmarks of Tomorrow: A Report on the New 'Post-Modern' World (1959), p. 111

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

Peter F. Drucker

A manager develops people.
Source: 1930s- 1950s, The Practice of Management (1954), p. 344

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

Peter F. Drucker

Source: 1930s- 1950s, The End of Economic Man (1939), p. 50

“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 F. Drucker

Source: 1930s- 1950s, The Practice of Management (1954), p. 392

“[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 F. Drucker

Source: 1930s- 1950s, The End of Economic Man (1939), p. 84

“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 F. Drucker

Source: 1930s- 1950s, The End of Economic Man (1939), p. 39

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

Peter F. Drucker

Source: 1930s- 1950s, Landmarks of Tomorrow: A Report on the New 'Post-Modern' World (1959), p. 94

“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. …our representative institution… a mirror in which we look when we want to see ourselves.”

Peter F. Drucker

1930s- 1950s, The New Society (1950)

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

Peter F. Drucker

Source: 1960s - 1980s, MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), Part 1, p. 88

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

Peter F. Drucker

Source: 1930s- 1950s, The Practice of Management (1954), p. 157

“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 F. Drucker

Foreword, p. xxxv
1930s- 1950s, The End of Economic Man (1939)

“There is every indication that the period ahead will be an innovative one, one of rapid change in technology, society, economy, and institutions.”

Peter F. Drucker

Source: 1960s - 1980s, MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), Part 3, p. 803 (last page)