8 Peter F. Drucker Quotes on History

Peter F. Drucker quotes on history

1. ...the information revolution. Almost everybody is sure ...that it is proceeding with unprecedented speed; and ...that its effects will be more radical than anything that has gone before. Wrong, and wrong again. Both in its speed and its impact, the information revolution uncannily resembles its two predecessors ...The first industrial revolution, triggered by James Watt's improved steam engine in the mid-1770s...did not produce many social and economic changes until the invention of the railroad in 1829 ...Similarly, the invention of the computer in the mid-1940s, ...it was not until 40 years later, with the spread of the Internet in the 1990s, that the information revolution began to bring about big economic and social changes. ...the same emergence of the 'super-rich' of their day, characterized both the first and the second industrial revolutions. ...These parallels are close and striking enough to make it almost certain that, as in the earlier industrial revolutions, the main effects of the information revolution on the next society still lie ahead. -- 'The way ahead' Economist.com (November 2001)

10. 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. -- Managing in a Time of Great Change (1995)

39. ...throughout the ages to be educated meant to be unproductive. ...our word 'school'--and its equivalent in all European languages--derives from a Greek word meaning 'leisure.' -- Landmarks of Tomorrow: A Report on the New 'Post-Modern' World (1959)

58. If war production should remain the only way out of a long-term depression, industrial society would be reduced to the choice between suicide through total war or suicide through total depression. Note: compare Dwight Eisenhower's January, 1961 Farewell Speech Concept of the Corporation (1945)

64. Unless we realize that the essence of Nazism is also an attempt to solve a universal problem of Western civilization--that of the industrial society--and that the basic principles on which the Nazis base this attempt are also in no way confined to Germany, we do not know what we fight for or what we fight against. ...The war is being fought for the structure of industrial society--its basic principles, its purposes, and its institutions. -- The Future of Industrial Man (1942)

66. With Christianity, freedom and equality became the two basic concepts of Europe; they are themselves Europe. -- The End of Economic Man (1939)

67. There is an unbroken chain of opposition to the introduction of economic freedom and to the capitalist autonomy of the economic sphere. ...In every case the opposition could only be overcome--peacefully or by force--because of the promise of capitalism to establish equality. ...That this promise was an illusion we all know. -- The End of Economic Man (1939)

69. Fascism is the result of the collapse of Europe's spiritual and social order. ...catastrophes broke through the everyday routine which makes men accept existing forms, institutions and tenets as unalterable natural laws. They suddenly exposed the vacuum behind the facade of society. -- The End of Economic Man (1939)