Best Peter Drucker Quotes, Thoughts and Advice
Before we look at the best Peter Drucker Quotes, Let’s know a little bit about him.
Peter Ferdinand Drucker was an Austrian-born American management consultant and the world-famous author. His writings contributed to the philosophical and practical foundations of the modern management methodologies. He coined the famous term “Knowledge Worker”.
We have carefully selected the best Peter Drucker Quotes for all the entrepreneurs, Management Students, Leaders and managers. Every single quote will add a new perspective and make you learn something or the other as they are not just quotes but all the lessons/advice given by Peter Drucker.
Do read till the end.
Best Peter Drucker Quotes On Entrepreneurship, Management, and Leadership.
1. “The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn’t being said.” – Peter Drucker
2. “The only skill that will be important in the 21st century is the skill of learning new skills. Everything else will become obsolete over time.” – Peter Drucker
3. “Entrepreneurship is neither a science nor an art. It is a practice.” – Peter Drucker Quotes
4. “The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.” – Peter Drucker
5. “Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.” – Peter Drucker
6. “Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes but no plans.” – Peter Drucker
7. “Strategy is a commodity, execution is an art.” – Peter Drucker
8. “Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.” – Peter Drucker
9. “Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.” – Peter Drucker
10. “The best way to predict the future is to create it.” – Peter Drucker
11. “What gets measured gets improved.” – Peter Drucker Best Quotes
12. “You can’t manage what you don’t measure.” – Peter Drucker
13. “The problem in my life and other people’s lives is not the absence of knowing what to do, but the absence of doing it.” – Peter Drucker
Peter Drucker Quotes on Management and Leadership
14. “Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.” –
15. “Meetings are a symptom of bad organization. The fewer meetings the better.” – Peter Drucker
16. “The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.” – Peter Drucker on Management and Leadership
17. “Time is the scarcest resource and unless it is managed nothing else can be managed.” – Peter Drucker
18. “The only thing we know about the future is that it will be different.” – Peter Drucker
19. “Profit is not the purpose of a business, but rather the test of its validity.” – Peter Drucker
20. “Making good decisions is a crucial skill at every level.” – Peter Drucker Quotes on Decision Making
21. “No institution can possibly survive if it needs geniuses or supermen to manage it. It must be organized in such a way as to be able to get along under a leadership composed of average human beings.” – Best Peter Drucker Quotes
22. “The productivity of work is not the responsibility of the worker but of the manager.” – Peter Drucker
23. “Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results, not attributes.” – Peter Drucker Quotes on Leadership
24. “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.” – Peter Drucker
25. “The most efficient way to produce anything is to bring together under one management as many as possible of the activities needed to turn out the product.” – Peter Drucker Sayings
26. “We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn.” – Peter Drucker Quotes on Learning
27. “Trying to predict the future is like trying to drive down a country road at night with no lights while looking out the back window.” – Peter Drucker
28. “Checking the results of a decision against its expectations shows executives what their strengths are, where they need to improve, and where they lack knowledge or information.” – Peter Drucker Sayings
29. “Company cultures are like country cultures. Never try to change one. Try, instead, to work with what you’ve got.” – Peter Drucker
30. “Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility.” – Peter Drucker
31. “The purpose of a business is to create a customer.” – Peter Drucker
32. “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.” – Peter Drucker
33. “Accept the fact that we have to treat almost anybody as a volunteer.” – Peter Drucker
34. “Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes.
35. “Management by objective works – if you know the objectives. Ninety per cent of the time you don’t.” – Peter Drucker Quotes on Management
36. “Doing the right thing is more important than doing the thing right.” – Peter Drucker
37. “Results are gained by exploiting opportunities, not by solving problems.” – Peter Drucker
38. “If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old.” – Peter Drucker
39. “Long-range planning does not deal with the future decisions, but with the future of present decisions.” – Peter Drucker
40. “Leadership is not magnetic personality–that can just as well be a glib tongue. It is not making friends and influencing people –that is flattery. Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to higher sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.” – Peter Drucker
41. “The better a man is the more mistakes he will make for the more things he will try.” – Peter Drucker Quotes on Success
42. “Time is the scarcest resource of the manager; If it is not managed, nothing else can be managed.” – Peter Drucker
43. “One cannot buy, rent or hire more time. The supply of time is totally inelastic. No matter how high the demand, the supply will not go up. There is no price for it. Time is totally perishable and cannot be stored. Yesterday’s time is gone forever, and will never come back. Time is always in short supply. There is no substitute for time. Everything requires time. All work takes place in and uses up time. Yet most people take for granted this unique, irreplaceable and necessary resource.” – Peter Drucker
44. “No one learns as much about a subject as one who is forced to teach it.” – Peter Drucker
45. “The three most charismatic leaders in this century inflicted more suffering on the human race than almost any trio in history: Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. What matters is not the leader’s charisma. What matters is the leader’s mission.” – Peter Drucker
46. “What you have to do and the way you have to do it is incredibly simple. Whether you are willing to do it, that’s another matter.” – Peter Drucker
47. “Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.” – Peter Drucker Quotes on Decision Making
48. “A person can perform only from strength. One cannot build performance on weakness, let alone on something one cannot do at all.” – Peter Drucker
49. “The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say “I.” And that’s not because they have trained themselves not to say “I.” They don’t think “I.” They think “we”; they think “team.” They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don’t sidestep it, but “we” gets the credit. This is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done.” – Peter Drucker
50. “Business has only two functions — marketing and innovation.” – Peter Drucker Quotes on Business
51. “History has been written not by the most talented but by the most motivated.” – Peter Drucker
52. “The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence – it is to act with yesterday’s logic.” – Peter Drucker
53. “Successful leaders don’t start out asking, “What do I want to do?” They ask, “What needs to be done?” Then they ask, “Of those things that would make a difference, which is right for me?” – Peter Drucker
54. “Do not believe that it is very much of an advance to do the unnecessary three times as fast.” – Peter Drucker
55. “Entrepreneurship is “risky” mainly because so few of the so-called entrepreneurs know what they are doing.” – Peter Drucker
56. “The most serious mistakes are not being made as a result of wrong answers. The truly dangerous thing is asking the wrong question.” – Peter Drucker
57. “Managers are action-focused; they are not philosophers and should not be.” – Peter Drucker
58. “Cultivate a deep understanding of yourself – not only what your strengths and weaknesses are but also how you learn, how you work with others, what your values are, and where you can make the greatest contribution. Because only when you operate from strengths can you achieve true excellence.” – Peter Drucker
59. “It’s amazing how many things busy people are doing that never will be missed.” – Peter Drucker
60. “If you have more than five goals, you have none.” – Peter Drucker Quotes on Goal Setting
61. “To make the future demands courage. It demands work. But it also demands faith.” – Peter Drucker
62. “The critical question is not “How can I achieve?” but “What can I contribute?” – Peter Drucker
63. “You cannot prevent a major catastrophe, but you can build an organization that is battle-ready, where people trust one another. In military training, the first rule is to instil soldiers with trust in their officers – because, without trust, they won’t fight.” – Peter Drucker
64. “There are two types of people in the business community: those who produce results and those who give you reasons why they didn’t.” – Peter Drucker
65. “Every time you do something that is important, write down what you expect will happen.” – Peter Drucker Quotes on Goal Setting
66. “There is the risk you cannot afford to take, and there is the risk you cannot afford not to take.” – Peter Drucker
67. “To make a living is no longer enough. Work also has to make a life.” – Peter Drucker
68. “As a manager, you’re paid to be uncomfortable. If you’re comfortable, it’s a sure sign you’re doing things wrong.” – Peter Drucker on Managing others
69. “To succeed in this new world, we will have to learn, first, who we are. Few people, even highly successful people, can answer the questions, Do you know what you’re good at? Do you know what you need to learn so that you get the full benefit of your strengths? Few have even asked themselves these questions.” – Peter Drucker
70. “Adequacy is the enemy of excellence.” – Peter Drucker
71. “Replace your pursuit of success with the pursuit of contribution.” – Peter Drucker
72. “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.” – Peter Drucker
73. “There are just two questions to ask to attain success in business: First, “What business am I in?” Second, “How’s business?” – Peter Drucker Quotes on Business
74. “Don’t try to innovate for the future. Innovate for the present!” – Peter Drucker
75. “Effective people are not problem-minded; they’re opportunity minded. They feed opportunities and starve problems. They think preventively.” – Peter Drucker
76. “The customer rarely buys what the company thinks it’s selling.” – Peter Drucker
77. “The most effective way to manage change is to create it.” – Peter Drucker Quotes on Change
78. “Elephants have a hard time adapting. Cockroaches outlive everything.” – Peter Drucker
79. “Customers pay only for what is of use to them and gives them value. Nothing else constitutes quality.” – Peter Drucker
80. “Education gives you neither experience nor wisdom.” – Peter Drucker
81. “It takes far less energy to move from first-rate performance to excellence than it does to move from incompetence to mediocrity.” – Peter Drucker
82. “Ideas are like frog eggs: you’ve got to lay a thousand to hatch one.” – Peter Drucker
83. “Everybody has accepted by now that change is unavoidable. But that still implies that change is like death and taxes – it should be postponed as long as possible and no change would be vastly preferable. But in a period of upheaval, such as the one we are living in, change is the norm.” – Peter Drucker
84. “We live in an age of unprecedented opportunity: If you’ve got ambition and smarts, you can rise to the top of your chosen profession, regardless of where you started out.” – Peter Drucker Quotes on Opportunity
85. “Success? Odd as it seems, you will achieve the greatest results in business and career if you drop the word ‘achievement’ from your vocabulary and replace it with ‘contribution’.” – Peter Drucker
86. “Most of what you hear about entrepreneurship is all wrong. It’s not magic; it’s not mysterious, and it has nothing to do with genes. It’s a discipline and, like any discipline, it can be learned.” – Peter Drucker
87. “You can either take action, or you can hang back and hope for a miracle. Miracles are great, but they are so unpredictable.” – Peter Drucker
88. “Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs.” – Peter Drucker Quotes on Marketing and Innovation
89. “What the customer buys and considers value is never a product. It is always utility, that is, what a product or a service does for the customer.” – Peter Drucker
90. “Never ask who’s right. Start out by asking what is right. And you find that out by listening to dissenting, disagreeing opinions.” – Peter Drucker
91. “Success always obsoletes the very behaviour that achieved it.” – Peter Drucker
92. “Look upon every obstacle as part payment towards your success.” – Peter Drucker
93. “Great wisdom not applied to action and behaviour is meaningless data.” – Peter Drucker
94. “Do not measure your life by your goals but what you are doing to achieve them.” – Peter Drucker
95. “Plans are worthless, but planning is invaluable.” – Peter Drucker
96. “Growth that adds volume without improving productivity is fat. The growth that diminishes productivity is cancer.” – Peter Drucker Best Quotes
97. “To survive and succeed, every organization will have to turn itself into a change agent.” – Peter Drucker
98. “A success that has outlived its usefulness may, in the end, be more damaging than failure.” – Peter Drucker
99. “Absolute size by itself is no indicator of success and achievement, let alone of managerial competence. Being the right size is.” – Peter Drucker
Last and the Most Powerful Peter Drucker Quote
100. “Ideas are cheap and abundant; what is of value is the effective placement of those ideas into situations that develop into action.” – Peter Drucker
