1. Quotes
  2. Authors
  3. Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker Quotes
page 3

Peter Ferdinand Drucker was an Austrian-born American management consultant, educator, and author, whose writings contributed to the philosophical and practical foundations of the modern business corporation. He was also a leader in the development of management education, he invented the concept known as management by objectives and self-control, and he has been described as "the founder of modern management".Drucker's books and scholarly and popular articles explored how humans are organized across the business, government, and nonprofit sectors of society. He is one of the best-known and most widely influential thinkers and writers on the subject of management theory and practice. His writings have predicted many of the major developments of the late twentieth century, including privatization and decentralization; the rise of Japan to economic world power; the decisive importance of marketing; and the emergence of the information society with its necessity of lifelong learning. In 1959, Drucker coined the term "knowledge worker," and later in his life considered knowledge-worker productivity to be the next frontier of management. Drucker gave his name to three institutions and the annual Global Peter Drucker Forum, held in his hometown of Vienna, honors his legacy. Wikipedia  

✵ 19. November 1909 – 11. November 2005
Peter F. Drucker photo
Peter F. Drucker: 180 quotes57 likes

Peter F. Drucker Quotes

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

Peter F. Drucker

Source: 1960s - 1980s, MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), Part 1, p. 182

“[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 F. Drucker

Source: 1930s- 1950s, The End of Economic Man (1939), p. 9

“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 F. Drucker

Source: 1930s- 1950s, The Practice of Management (1954), p. 327

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

Peter F. Drucker

Source: 1930s- 1950s, The Practice of Management (1954), p. 41

“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 F. Drucker

Source: 1960s - 1980s, MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), Part 1, p. 181

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

Peter F. Drucker

Source: 1960s - 1980s, MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), Part 1, p. 199

“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 F. Drucker

Source: 1930s- 1950s, The Future of Industrial Man (1942), p. 107-108

“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 F. Drucker

Source: 1930s- 1950s, The End of Economic Man (1939), p. 151

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

Peter F. Drucker

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

“That people even in well paid jobs choose ever earlier retirement is a severe indictment of our organizations -- not just business, but government service, the universities. These people don't find their jobs interesting.”

Peter F. Drucker

The Shape of Things to Come: An Interview with Peter F. Drucker Leader to Leader, No. 1 (Summer 1996)
1990s and later

“[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 F. Drucker

Source: 1930s- 1950s, Landmarks of Tomorrow: A Report on the New 'Post-Modern' World (1959), p. 115

“One of the great movements in my lifetime among educated people is the need to commit themselves to action. Most people are not satisfied with giving money; we also feel we need to work. That is why there is an enormous surge in the number of unpaid staff, volunteers. The needs are not going to go away. Business is not going to take up the slack, and government cannot.”

Peter F. Drucker

&quot;New Priorities&quot; Dancing Toward The Future, Context Institute http://www.context.org/, (1992) <br class="br">1990s and later

“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 F. Drucker

Source: 1960s - 1980s, MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), Part 1, p. 229

“There is a point at which a transformation has to take place.”

Peter F. Drucker

Source: 1960s - 1980s, MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), Part 3, p. 640

“For if this country… 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 F. Drucker

compare Dwight Eisenhower's January, 1961 Farewell Speech
1930s- 1950s, The New Society (1950)

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

Peter F. Drucker

Source: 1960s - 1980s, MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), Part 1, p. 119

“I think the growth industry of the future in this country and the world will soon be the continuing education of adults. …I think the educated person of the future is somebody who realizes the need to continue to learn. That is the new definition and it is going to change the world we live in and work in.”

Peter F. Drucker

Source: 1990s and later, Managing in a Time of Great Change (1995), p. 295

“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 F. Drucker

Source: 1930s- 1950s, The End of Economic Man (1939), p. 17

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

Peter F. Drucker

Source: 1960s - 1980s, MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), Part 1, p. 99

“In the 1950s, industrial workers had become the largest single group in every developed country, and unionized industrial workers in mass-production industry (which was then dominant everywhere) had attained upper-middle-class income levels. They had extensive job security, pensions, long paid vacations, and comprehensive unemployment insurance or "lifetime employment." Above all, they had achieved political power… Thirty-five years later, in 1990, industrial workers and their unions were in retreat. They had become marginal in numbers. Whereas industrial workers who make or move things had accounted for two fifths of the American work force in the 1950s, they accounted for less than one fifth in the early 1990s--that is, for no more than they had accounted for in 1900, when their meteoric rise began… By the year 2000 or 2010, in every developed free-market country, industrial workers will account for no more than an eighth of the work force. Union power has been declining just as fast… By the year 2000 or 2010, in every developed free-market country, industrial workers will account for no more than an eighth of the work force. Union power has been declining just as fast.”

Peter F. Drucker

About the rise and fall of the blue-collar worker
1990s and later, "The Age of Social Transformation." 1994

“I would hope that American managers - indeed, managers worldwide - continue to appreciate what I have been saying almost from day one: that management is so much more than exercising rank and privilege, that it is much more than "making deals."”

Peter F. Drucker

Management affects people and their lives.
Source: 1990s and later, Managing in a Time of Great Change (1995), p. 351

“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 can 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 F. Drucker

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

“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 F. Drucker

Source: 1930s- 1950s, Landmarks of Tomorrow: A Report on the New 'Post-Modern' World (1959), p. 126

“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 F. Drucker

Source: 1930s- 1950s, The End of Economic Man (1939), p. 244

“We do not need more laws. No country suffers from a shortage of laws. We need a new model.”

Peter F. Drucker

Source: 1960s - 1980s, MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), Part 1, p. 364

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

Peter F. Drucker

Source: 1960s - 1980s, MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), p. 30

“The purpose of an organization is to enable common men to do uncommon things.”

Peter F. Drucker

Source: 1960s - 1980s, MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), Part 2, p. 455

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

Peter F. Drucker

Source: 1960s - 1980s, MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), Part 1, p. 169

“…the information revolution. Almost everybody is sure …that it is proceeding with unprecedented speed; and …that its effects will be more radical than anything that has gone before. Wrong, and wrong again. Both in its speed and its impact, the information revolution uncannily resembles its two predecessors …The first industrial revolution, triggered by James Watt's improved steam engine in the mid-1770s…did not produce many social and economic changes until the invention of the railroad in 1829 …Similarly, the invention of the computer in the mid-1940s, …it was not until 40 years later, with the spread of the Internet in the 1990s, that the information revolution began to bring about big economic and social changes. …the same emergence of the “super-rich” of their day, characterized both the first and the second industrial revolutions. …These parallels are close and striking enough to make it almost certain that, as in the earlier industrial revolutions, the main effects of the information revolution on the next society still lie ahead.”

Peter F. Drucker

&quot;The way ahead&quot; Economist.com http://www.economist.com/ (November 2001) <br class="br">1990s and later

“Top management as a function and as a structure was first developed by Georg von Siemens (1839-1901) in Germany between 1870 and 1880, when he designed and built the Deutsche Bank and made it, within a very few years, into continental Europe's leading and most dynamic financial institution.”

Peter F. Drucker

Source: 1960s - 1980s, MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), Part 3, p. 605

“Engineers speak half–jokingly about Murphy's Law: " If anything can go wrong, it will." But complexity stands under a second law as well. Let me call it Drucker's law: "If one thing goes wrong, everything else will, and at the same time."”

Peter F. Drucker

Source: 1960s - 1980s, MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), Part 3, p. 681

“The most dangerous and at the same time most stupid explanation of fascism is the propaganda theory. In the first place, I have never been able to find anyone who could reconcile it with the fact that right up to the fascist victory—and in Italy beyond it—literally all means of propaganda were in the hands of uncompromising enemies of fascism. There was not one widely-read newspaper but poured ridicule on Hitler and Mussolini while the Nazi and the fascist press were unread and on the verge of bankruptcy. The radio in Germany, owned by the government, issued one anti-Nazi broadside after the other. More powerful than both, the established churches used all the enormous direct influence of the pulpit and the confessional to fight fascism and Nazism.”

Peter F. Drucker

Source: 1930s- 1950s, The End of Economic Man (1939), pp. 7-8

“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 F. Drucker

Source: 1930s- 1950s, The Future of Industrial Man (1942), p. 28

“Sören Kierkegaard has another answer: human existence is possible as existence not in despair, as existence not in tragedy; it is possible as existence in faith… Faith is the belief that in God the impossible is possible, that in Him time and eternity are one, that both life and death are meaningful.”

Peter F. Drucker

The Ecological Vision: Reflections on the American Condition (1993)
1990s and later

“One reason for the tremendous increase in health-care costs in the U. S. is managerial neglect of the "hotel services" by the people who dominate the hospital, such as doctors and nurses.”

Peter F. Drucker

Source: 1960s - 1980s, MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), Part 2, p. 539

“The rule should be to minimize the need for people to get together to accomplish anything.”

Peter F. Drucker

Source: 1960s - 1980s, MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), Part 2, p. 548

“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.
The citizen of 1900 if employed worked for a small family-type operation; the small pop-and-mom store employing a helper or two; the family household; and so on. And of course, the great majority of people in those days, except in the most highly industrialized countries—such as Britain or Belgium—worked on the farm.
Our society has become an employee society. In the early 1900s people asked, “What do you do?””

Peter F. Drucker

Today they tend to ask, “Whom do you work for?”
Source: 1960s - 1980s, MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), p. 4

“Increasingly, politics is not about "who gets what, when, how" but about values, each of them considered to be absolute. Politics is about "the right to life"…It is about the environment. It is about gaining equality for groups alleged to be oppressed…None of these issues is economic. All are fundamentally moral.”

Peter F. Drucker

About how government can function
1990s and later, "The Age of Social Transformation." 1994

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

Peter F. Drucker

Source: 1960s - 1980s, MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), p. 32

“This new knowledge economy will rely heavily on knowledge workers…. the most striking growth will be in “knowledge technologists:” computer technicians, software designers, analysts in clinical labs, manufacturing technologists, paralegals…. They are not, as a rule, much better paid than traditional skilled workers, but they see themselves as “professionals.” Just as unskilled manual workers in manufacturing were the dominant social and political force in the 20th century, knowledge technologists are likely to become the dominant social—-and perhaps also political—-force over the next decades.”

Peter F. Drucker

&quot;The next society&quot; Economist.com http://www.economist.com/ (November 2001) <br class="br">1990s and later

“Once a year ask the boss, "What do I or my people do that helps you to do your job?" and "What do I or my people do that hampers you?"”

Peter F. Drucker

Source: 1990s and later, Managing for the Future: The 1990's and Beyond (1992), p. 137

“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 F. Drucker

Source: 1930s- 1950s, Landmarks of Tomorrow: A Report on the New 'Post-Modern' World (1959), p. 93-94

“The first organization structure in the modern West was laid down in the canon law of the Catholic Church eight hundred years ago.”

Peter F. Drucker

Source: 1960s - 1980s, MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), Part 2, p. 525

“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 F. Drucker

Source: 1930s- 1950s, Landmarks of Tomorrow: A Report on the New 'Post-Modern' World (1959), p. 144

“The society of ]]organizations\\ is new-only seventy years ago employees were a small minority in every society.”

Peter F. Drucker

Source: 1960s - 1980s, MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), Part 1, p. 284

“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 F. Drucker

The Age of Discontinuity (1969)
1960s - 1980s

“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 F. Drucker

Source: 1930s- 1950s, The End of Economic Man (1939), p. 37

“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 F. Drucker

Source: 1930s- 1950s, The Future of Industrial Man (1942), p. 96

“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 F. Drucker

The Frontiers of Management (1986)
1960s - 1980s

“Decisions exist only in the present.”

Peter F. Drucker

Source: 1960s - 1980s, MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), Part 1, p. 125