Quotes from Peter Drucker

There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all.

The computer is a moron.

The human being is a very poorly designed machine tool. The human being excels in coordination. He excels in relating perception to action. He works best if the entire human being, muscles, senses, and mind, is engaged in the work.

History has been written not by the most talented but by the most motivated.

Entrepreneurship is neither a science nor an art. It is a practice.

I read a lot of history, biographies, science, and novels,' he says, ushering a reporter out the door with a hint of relief. 'I do not read management or economics.' (from an interview in the Christian Science Monitor , July 26, 1993)

Nothing is less productive than to make more efficient what should not be done at all.

An employer has no business with a man's personality. Employment is a specific contract calling for a specific performance, and nothing else. Any attempt by an employer to go beyond this is usurpation. It is an immoral as well as illegal intrusion of privacy.

The most important thing about priorities and posteriorities is not intelligent analysis but courage.

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

There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all. Peter Drucker

Objectives are not fate; they are direction. They are not commands; they are commitments. They do not determine the future; they are means to mobilize the resources and energies of the business for the making of the future.

Communication always makes demands. It always demands that the recipient become somebody, do something, believe something. It always appeals to motivation.

The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn't said.

I find more and more executives less and less well informed about the outside world, if only because they believe that the data on the computer printouts are ipso facto information.

The computer is a moron.

The computer actually may have aggravated management's degenerative tendency to focus inward on costs.

The computer, being a mechanical moron, can handle only quantifiable data.

In business school classrooms they construct wonderful models of a non- world.

Education can no longer be the sole property of the state.

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

Adequacy is the enemy of excellence.

An organization which just perpetuates today's level of vision, excellence, and accomplishment has lost the capacity to adapt.

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