Quotes from The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done

“It is more productive to convert an opportunity into results than to solve a problem - which only restores the equilibrium of yesterday.”
― Peter F. Drucker, quote from The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done

“Intelligence, imagination, and knowledge are essential resources, but only effectiveness converts them into results.”
― Peter F. Drucker, quote from The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done

“Converting a decision into action requires answering several distinct questions: Who has to know of this decision? What action has to be taken? Who is to take it? And what does the action have to be so that the people who have to do it can do it? The first and the last of these are too often overlooked—with dire results.”
― Peter F. Drucker, quote from The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done

“Working on the right things is what makes knowledge work effective.”
― Peter F. Drucker, quote from The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done

“Meetings are by definition a concession to deficient organization For one either meets or one works. One cannot do both at the same time.”
― Peter F. Drucker, quote from The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done

“If the executive lets the flow of events determine what he does, what he works on, and what he takes seriously, he will fritter himself away “operating.” He may be an excellent man. But he is certain to waste his knowledge and ability and to throw away what little effectiveness he might have achieved. What the executive needs are criteria which enable him to work on the truly important, that is, on contributions and results, even though the criteria are not found in the flow of events.”
― Peter F. Drucker, quote from The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done

“Effective executives know that their subordinates are paid to perform and not to please their superiors.”
― Peter F. Drucker, quote from The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done

“a decision without an alternative is a desperate gambler’s throw,”
― Peter F. Drucker, quote from The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done

“All military services have long ago learned that the officer who has given an order goes out and sees for himself whether it has been carried out. At the least he sends one of his own aides—he never relies on what he is told by the subordinate to whom the order was given. Not that he distrusts the subordinate; he has learned from experience to distrust communications.”
― Peter F. Drucker, quote from The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done

“One cannot hire a hand—the whole man always comes with it,”
― Peter F. Drucker, quote from The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done

“Is this still worth doing?” And if it isn’t, he gets rid of it so as to be able to concentrate on the few tasks that, if done with excellence, will really make a difference in the results of his own job and in the performance of his organization.”
― Peter F. Drucker, quote from The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done

“A well-managed factory is boring. Nothing exciting happens in it because the crises have been anticipated and have been converted into routine.”
― Peter F. Drucker, quote from The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done

“The focus on contribution by itself supplies the four basic requirements of effective human relations: communications; teamwork; self-development; and development of others.”
― Peter F. Drucker, quote from The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done

“People inevitably start out with an opinion; to ask them to search for the facts first is even undesirable. They will simply do what everyone is far too prone to do anyhow: look for the facts that fit the conclusion they have already reached.”
― Peter F. Drucker, quote from The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done

“The first rule in decision-making is that one does not make a decision unless there is disagreement.”
― Peter F. Drucker, quote from The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done

“The less an organization has to do to produce results, the better it does its job.”
― Peter F. Drucker, quote from The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done

“plan, organize, integrate, motivate, and measure.”
― Peter F. Drucker, quote from The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done

“Two hundred people, of course, can do a great deal more work than one man. But it does not follow that they produce and contribute more.”
― Peter F. Drucker, quote from The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done

“The people who get nothing done often work a great deal harder. In the first place, they underestimate the time for any one task. They always expect that everything will go right. Yet, as every executive knows, nothing ever goes right. The unexpected always happens—the unexpected is indeed the only thing one can confidently expect.”
― Peter F. Drucker, quote from The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done

“There is no such thing as a “good man.” Good for what? is the question.”
― Peter F. Drucker, quote from The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done

“People in general, and knowledge workers in particular, grow according to the demands they make on themselves. They grow according to what they consider to be achievement and attainment. If they demand little of themselves, they will remain stunted. If they demand a good deal of themselves, they will grow to giant stature—without any more effort than is expended by the nonachievers.”
― Peter F. Drucker, quote from The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done

“By themselves, character and integrity do not accomplish anything. But their absence faults everything else. Here, therefore, is the one area where weakness is a disqualification by itself rather than a limitation on performance capacity and strength.”
― Peter F. Drucker, quote from The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done

“The danger is that executives will become contemptuous of information and stimulus that cannot be reduced to computer logic and computer language. Executives may become blind to everything that is perception (i.e., event) rather than fact (i.e., after the event). The tremendous amount of computer information may thus shut out access to reality.”
― Peter F. Drucker, quote from The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done

“Today is always the result of actions and decisions taken yesterday. Man, however, whatever his title or rank, cannot foresee the future. Yesterday’s actions and decisions, no matter how courageous or wise they may have been, inevitably become today’s problems,”
― Peter F. Drucker, quote from The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done

“If there is any one “secret” of effectiveness, it is concentration. Effective executives do first things first and they do one thing at a time.”
― Peter F. Drucker, quote from The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done

“Structuring jobs to fit personality is almost certain to lead to favoritism and conformity. And no organization can afford either. It needs equity and impersonal fairness in its personnel decisions. Or else it will either lose its good people or destroy their incentive. And it needs diversity. Or else it will lack the ability to change and the ability for dissent which (as Chapter 7 will discuss) the right decision demands.”
― Peter F. Drucker, quote from The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done

“Direct results always come first. In the care and feeding of an organization, they play the role calories play in the nutrition of the human body.”
― Peter F. Drucker, quote from The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done

“blackout one New York newspaper managed to appear: The New York Times. It had shifted its printing operations immediately across the Hudson to Newark, New Jersey, where the power plants were functioning and where a local paper, The Newark Evening News, had a substantial printing plant. But instead of the million copies the Times management had ordered, fewer than half this number actually reached the readers. Just as the Times went to press (so at least goes a widely told anecdote) the executive editor and three of his assistants started arguing how to hyphenate one word. This took them forty-eight minutes (so it is said)—or half of the available press time. The Times, the editor argued, sets a standard for written English in the United States and therefore cannot afford a grammatical mistake.”
― Peter F. Drucker, quote from The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done

“The effective executive, therefore, asks: “What can my boss do really well?” “What has he done really well?” “What does he need to know to use his strength?” “What does he need to get from me to perform?” He does not worry too much over what the boss cannot do.”
― Peter F. Drucker, quote from The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done

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Popular quotes

“Whachoo want, white boy? Burn cream? A Band-Aid?
Then he raised his own enormous palms to me, brought them up real close so I could see them properly; the hideous constellation of water-filled blisters, angry red welts from grill marks, the old scars, the raw flesh where steam or hot fat had made the skin simply roll off. They looked like the claws of some monstrous science-fiction crustacean, knobby and calloused under wounds old and new. I watched, transfixed, as Tyrone - his eyes never leaving mine - reached slowly under the broiler and, with one naked hand, picked up a glowing-hot sizzle-platter, moved it over to the cutting board, and set it down in front of me.
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“Me parece que no lo entiendes. Las vidas de las personas pasan por delante de sus ojos antes de que mueran, y el proceso se llama 'vivir'. ¿Te apetece un camarón?”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from The Last Continent

“She had brillant red hair, like honey and roses and the sun all together.”
― Kiera Cass, quote from The Prince

“Teachers and students (leadership and people), co-intent on reality, are both Subjects, not only in the task of unveiling that reality, and thereby coming to know it critically, but in the task of re-creating that knowledge. As they attain this knowledge of reality through common reflection and action, they discover themselves as its permanent re-creators.”
― Paulo Freire, quote from Pedagogy of the Oppressed

“We all have the potential to fall in love a thousand times in our lifetime. It's easy. The first girl I ever loved was someone I knew in sixth grade. Her name was Missy; we talked about horses. The last girl I love will be someone I haven't even met yet, probably. They all count. But there are certain people you love who do something else; they define how you classify what love is supposed to feel like. These are the most important people in your life, and you’ll meet maybe four or five of these people over the span of 80 years. But there’s still one more tier to all this; there is always one person you love who becomes that definition. It usually happens retrospectively, but it happens eventually. This is the person who unknowingly sets the template for what you will always love about other people, even if some of these loveable qualities are self-destructive and unreasonable. The person who defines your understanding of love is not inherently different than anyone else, and they’re often just the person you happen to meet the first time you really, really, want to love someone. But that person still wins. They win, and you lose. Because for the rest of your life, they will control how you feel about everyone else.”
― Chuck Klosterman, quote from Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story

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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.