Peter Drucker Quotes
Austrian born Peter Drucker, moved to Germany as a young man and earned a doctorate in international law. He left after the rise of the Nazi party. After 4 years in London, he came the USA as a professor serving at New York University and Claremont Graduate University as well as earning livelihood as a freelance writer and business consultant. In his 39 books he championed innovative ideas based on human nature and the reality of how things actually are. Drucker felt that businesses would benefit from ‘planned abandonment’ of past successes that are no longer relevant in a fast-changing world. He felt executives would do well to acknowledge the superior knowledge base of so many of their employees. Bonnett and I find his quotes on managing, innovation and society to be insightful, refreshing and poignant.
Many consider Peter Drucker to be the greatest business philosophers of our time.
Image: Photo of management consultant, educator, and author, Peter Drucker
“Company cultures are like country cultures. Never try to change one. Try, instead, to work with what you’ve got.”
“Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.”
“When a subject becomes totally obsolete we make it a required course.”
Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes.”
“Never mind your happiness; do your duty.”
“People who don’t take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. People who do take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year.”“The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn’t said.
Peter Drucker was a writer and a management coach and consultant. His most controversial work was on compensation schemes, in which he said that senior management should not be paid more than twenty times the lowest paid employee. Here are two short quotes from Drucker to help motivate us to successfully move forward in our lives.
“Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.”
“My greatest strength as a consultant is to be ignorant and ask a few questions.”
“Promotion should not be more important than accomplishment, or avoiding instability more important than taking the right risk.”
“Information is, above all, a principle of economy. The fewer data needed, the better the information. And an overload of information leads to an information blackout. It does not enrich, but impoverishes.”
– Peter Drucker (1909-2005)