Peter Drucker Important Quotations

In a few hundred years, when the history of our time will be written from a long-term perspective, it is likely that the most important event historians will see is not technology, not the Internet, not e-commerce. It is an unprecedented change in the human condition. For the first time - literally - substantial and rapidly growing numbers of people have choices. For the first time, they will have to manage themselves. And society is totally unprepared for it.

The really important things are said over cocktails and are never done.

It's more important to do the right thing than to do things right.

Business purpose and business mission are so rarely given adequate thought is perhaps the most important cause of business frustration and failure.

Doing the right thing is more important than doing the thing right.

The single most important thing to remember about any enterprise is that results exist only on the outside.The result of a business is a satisfied customer. The result of a hospital is a satisfied patient. The result of a school is a student who has learned something and puts it to work ten years later. Inside an enterprise there are only costs.

The single most important thing to remember about any enterprise is that there are no results inside its walls. The result of a business is a satisfied customer.

The most important work of the executive is to identify the changes that have already happened. The important thing . . . is to exploit the changes that have already occurred and to use them as opportunities.

Important decisions are risky. They should be controversial. Acclamation means that nobody has done the homework.

The most important contribution management needs to make in the 21st century is ... to increase the productivity of knowledge work and the knowledge worker

The postwar WWII GI Bill of Rights-and the enthusiastic response to it on the part of America's veterans-signaled the shift to the knowledge society. Future historians may consider it the most important event of the twentieth century. We are clearly in the midst of this transformation; indeed, if history is any guide, it will not be completed until 2010 or 2020. But already it has changed the political, economic and moral landscape of the world.

Promotion should not be more important than accomplishment, or avoiding instability more important than taking the right risk.

What managers decide to stop doing is often more important than what they decide to do.

Our most important education system is in the employees' own organization.

An institution which is financed by a budget - or which enjoys a monopoly which the customer cannot escape - is rewarded for what it deserves rather than what it earns. It is paid for 'good intentions' and 'programs'. It is paid for not alienating important constituents rather than satisfying any one group. It is misdirected by the way it is being paid into defining performance and results as what will produce the budget rather than as what will produce contribution.

Every time you do something that is important, write down what you expect will happen.

The only skill that will be important in the 21st century is the skill of learning new skills.Everythi ng else will become obsolete over time.

In todays economy, the most important resource is no longer labor, capital or land; it is knowledge