Peter Drucker Quotes

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

3. An innovation, to be effective, has to be simple and it has to be focused. It should do only one thing, otherwise, it confuses. If it is not simple, it won’t work. Everything new runs into trouble; if complicated, it cannot be repaired or fixed. All effective innovations are breathtakingly simple. Indeed, the greatest praise an innovation can receive is for people to say: ‘This is obvious. Why didn’t I think of it?’ Even the innovation that creates new uses and new markets should be directed toward a specific, clear, designed application. It should be focused on a specific need that it satisfies, on a specific end result that it produces.

For the social ecologist language is not "communication." It is not just "message." It is substance. It is the cement that holds humanity together. It creates community and communication. ...Social ecologists need not be "great" writers; but they have to be respectful writers, caring writers.

If leaders are unable to slough off yesterday, to abandon yesterday, they simply will not be able to create tomorrow.

[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.

An organization is not, like an animal, an end in itself, and successful by the mere act of perpetuating the species. An organization is an organ of society and fulfills itself by the contribution it makes to the outside environment. And yet the bigger and apparently more successful an organization gets to be, the more will inside events tend to engage the interests, the energies, and the abilities of the executive to the exclusion of his real tasks and his real effectiveness in the outside.

[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."

The subject of this book is managing oneself for effectiveness.

At one point quantity turned into quality.

[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.

Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship...the act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth.

Measuring requires, first and foremost, analytical ability. But it also demands that measurement be used to make self-control possible, rather than abused to control people from the outside and above — that is, to dominate them.

Many brilliant people believe that ideas move mountains. But bulldozers move mountains; ideas show where the bulldozers should go to work.

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

Brilliant men are often strikingly ineffectual; they fail to realize that the brilliant insight is not by itself achievement. They never have learned that insights become effectiveness only through hard systematic work.