Quotessence
Home / Authors / Peter Drucker
Peter Drucker

Peter Drucker Quotes

Author

Filter quotes by topic

AllPeopleManagementBusinessIfsOrganizationNeedsDecisionKnowsManagersResultsFirstsInnovationOpportunityLeadershipImportantLeaderCustomersDoeInspirationalJobs

Famous Peter Drucker Quotes

“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.”

IfsNeedsHumansEndsSocialGrowthCommunityHuman BeingsCitiesEnvironmentCenturyBuildingCitizensOrganizationAvailableDestructiveDominant21st CenturyConstructiveExplosivesNonprofitsSocial EnvironmentBuilding Community
Author:Peter Drucker
Create image

“There is a great need for a new approach, new methods and new tools in teaching, man's oldest and most reactionary craft. There is great need for a rapid increase in the productivity of learning. There is, above all, great need for methods that will make the teacher effective and multiply his or her efforts and competence. Teaching is, in fact, the only traditional craft in which we have not yet fashioned the tools that make an ordinary person capable of superior performance. In this respect, teaching is far behind medicine, where the tools first became available a century or more ago.”

MenNeedsFirstsPersonsFactsEffortBehindsTeacherTeachingCenturyApproachCapableOrdinaryToolsPerformancesIncreaseMethodMedicineAvailableProductivitySuperiorsTraditionalCraftsRapidsCompetenceReactionariesOrdinary PersonNew ApproachSuperior Performance
Author:Peter Drucker
Create image

“Innovation is the specific tool of entrepreneurs, the means by which they exploit change as an opportunity for a different business or a different service. It is capable of being presented as a discipline, capable of being learned, capable of being practiced. Entrepreneurs need to search purposefully for the sources of innovation, the changes and their symptoms that indicate opportunities for successful innovation. And they need to know and to apply the principles of successful innovation.”

KnowsNeedsMeanDifferentSuccessOpportunityPrinciplesCreativitySuccessfulSourceDisciplineCapableToolsStressInnovationEntrepreneurSymptomsExploits
Book:Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Create image

“The corporation is the "master", the employee is the "servant". Because the corporation owns the means of production without which the employee could not make a living, the employee needs the corporation more than vice versa.”

NeedsMeanWorkBusinessMastersVicesProductionsCorporationsServantEmployeeVice Versa
Book:The Peter Drucker Collection on Managing in Turbulent Times: Management: Revised Edition, Management Challenges for the 21st Century, Managing in Turbulent Times, and The Practice of Management
Create image

“The greatest challenge to organizations is the balance between continuity and change. You need both. At different times, the balance is slightly more over here, or slightly more over there, but you need both. And balance is basically the greatest task in leadership. Organizations have to have continuity, and yet if there is not enough new challenge, not enough change, they become empty bureaucracies, awfully fast.”

IfsNeedsDifferentEnoughChallengesBusinessBalanceTasksEmptyOrganizationBureaucracyContinuityDifferent TimesNew Challenges
Author:Peter Drucker
Create image

“..there is need for a person to be generally educated. Otherwise you shrivel up much too soon. Whether this means reading the bible (I read the New Testament every few years) or reading the great 19th century novelists (the greatest and shrewdest judge of people and of society who ever lived), or classical philosophy (which I cannot read-it puts me to sleep immediately), or history (which is secondary). What matters is that the knowledge worker, by the time he or she reaches middle age, has developed and nourished a human being rather than a tax accountant or a hydraulic engineer.”

PeopleNeedsYearsHumansMeanPersonsMatterPhilosophyAgeReadingHuman BeingsSleepBusinessEducationMiddleCenturyJudgingTaxesWorkersEducatedNovelistsEngineersWhat MattersTestamentMiddle AgesNew Testament19th CenturyAccountantsReading The BibleKnowledge Workers
Author:Peter Drucker
Create image

“The most important, and indeed the truly unique, contribution of management in the 20th century was the fifty-fold increase in the productivity of the MANUAL WORKER in manufacturing. The most important contribution management needs to make in the 21st century is similarly to increase the productivity of KNOWLEDGE WORK and the KNOWLEDGE WORKER.”

NeedsImportantKnowledgeLearningCenturyUniqueIncreaseManagementWorkersProductivityContributionFifty21st Century20th CenturyFoldsManufacturingManualsImportant ContributionsKnowledge Workers
Book:Management Challenges for the 21st Century
Create image

“To be effective, every knowledge worker, and especially every executive, therefore needs to dispose of time in fairly large chunks. To have small dribs and drabs of time at his disposal will not be sufficient even if the total is an impressive number of hours.”

IfsNeedsHoursNumbersRiskManagementWorkersSufficientExecutivesImpressiveRisk ManagementChunksKnowledge Workers
Book:The Essential Drucker: Selections from the Management Works of Peter F. Drucker
Create image