The most probable assumption is that no currently working 'business theory' will be valid 10 years hence.

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.

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.

The next thing to be said about what long-range planning is not, is that it does not deal with future decisions. It deals with the futurity of present decisions. Decisions exist only in the present. The question that faces the long-range planner is not what we should do tomorrow.

..there is need for a person to be generally educated. Otherwise you shrivel up much too soon. Whether this means reading the bible (I read the New Testament every few years) or reading the great 19th century novelists (the greatest and shrewdest judge of people and of society who ever lived), or classical philosophy (which I cannot read-it puts me to sleep immediately), or history (which is secondary). What matters is that the knowledge worker, by the time he or she reaches middle age, has developed and nourished a human being rather than a tax accountant or a hydraulic engineer.

Some of the best business and nonprofit CEOs I've worked with over a sixty-five-year consulting career were not stereotypical leaders. They were all over the map in terms of their personalities, attitudes, values, strengths, and weaknesses.

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.