Drucker wrote it in The Effective Executive (Harper & Row, New York, 1967), in chapter 4, “Making Strength Productive,” on page 72. Quote Investigator verified that page against a hardcopy of the first edition, and the sentence sits inside Drucker’s argument against hiring “well-rounded” people.
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In context
Evoking the world of Peter Drucker — Austrian-born American management consultant, educator and author. Theme: "Strong people always have strong weaknesses too". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
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Provenance
Where the sentence actually appears
Work
The Effective Executive
Author
Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005)
First published
1967 · Harper & Row, New York
Located at
Chapter 4, “Making Strength Productive,” page 72
The idea that there are “well-rounded” people, people who have only strengths and no weaknesses . . . is a prescription for mediocrity if not for incompetence. Strong people always have strong weaknesses too. Where there are peaks, there are valleys.
1967 first edition
The ellipsis marks words omitted from the middle of Drucker’s first sentence in Quote Investigator’s transcription of page 72.
1905 — the oxymoron is already in print. Edmund Downey’s Twenty Years Ago, a memoir of literary London, calls the journalist John Augustus O’Shea’s habit of introducing people under false names one of his “strong weaknesses” (full text ↗).
1967 — Drucker publishes the sentence in The Effective Executive, chapter 4, “Making Strength Productive,” page 72; Quote Investigator verified the page against a hardcopy (Quote Investigator ↗). The Harper & Row first edition ↗ lists that chapter.
1976 — John J. Tarrant’s Drucker biography ↗ (Cahners Books) reprints the saying in an appendix of Drucker one-liners — without the final “too.” Paul Dickson’s The Official Rules does the same in 1978.
1989 — Wess Roberts recasts it as “Strong chieftains always have strong weaknesses” in Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun, in a chapter presenting the lines as Attila’s own thoughts. Quote Investigator concludes Roberts crafted the variant after Drucker’s remark was already circulating (Quote Investigator ↗).
The Effective Executive was first published in 1967, so it remains under copyright in the United States; current editions ↗ are issued by HarperBusiness, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. The sentence is reproduced here briefly, with full citation, for identification and verification.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
What goes wrong with this one
No serious source takes this line away from Drucker. What drifts is the wording — and one 1989 bestseller that handed a version of it to a fifth-century warlord.
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Wording“Strong people always have strong weaknesses” — without the “too” trimmed
John J. Tarrant’s 1976 Drucker biography ↗ and Paul Dickson’s 1978 The Official Rules both print the saying without Drucker’s final word. The clipped form stuck: the reader who brought the question to Quote Investigator ↗ had it as “Strong people have strong weaknesses.”
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AttributionAttila the Hun 1989 repackaging
Wess Roberts’s Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun (1989) prints “Strong chieftains always have strong weaknesses” in a chapter of ‘Attilaisms — Selected Thoughts of Attila.’ Quote Investigator ↗ concludes Roberts crafted the variant after Drucker’s remark was already in circulation — a modern author’s line dressed as an ancient one.
✓The sentence is Drucker’s, and the full form has four beats, not three: “Strong people always have strong weaknesses too.” — The Effective Executive (Harper & Row, 1967), chapter 4, page 72, verified against a hardcopy by Quote Investigator ↗.
Context
Why he wrote it
Drucker meant this as an argument, not an aphorism. The chapter it sits in, “Making Strength Productive,” is about how to staff an organisation, and his claim is that hiring to avoid weakness quietly selects for people with no sharp edges at all. Chasing the flawless candidate, he wrote, is “a prescription for mediocrity if not for incompetence.”
He set the point up with a story: Lincoln, told that General Grant drank too much, was supposed to have asked what brand, so he could send a barrel to his other generals. Quote Investigator — which located the Drucker page — treats that Lincoln whiskey line itself as legend, which is a useful reminder that a good anecdote and a documented quotation are not the same thing.
Where there are peaks, there are valleys.
Was “strong weaknesses” Drucker’s coinage?
Not the phrase itself. Quote Investigator points to a 1905 memoir of literary London, Edmund Downey’s Twenty Years Ago, which describes the journalist John Augustus O’Shea’s taste for practical jokes as one of his “strong weaknesses.” The scanned page bears that out. What Drucker added was the turn from a wry description of one man into a general rule about people who get things done.
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1909–2005 · Austrian-born American management consultant, educator and author
Peter F. Drucker was an Austrian-born American management consultant, educator and author — more than anyone, the writer who turned management into a subject you could study. The Practice of Management (1954) and The Effective Executive (1967) remain his best-known books. His talent for compressing a whole argument into one blunt sentence is also why so many lines, genuine and invented, end up with his name attached.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Primary source
Peter F. Drucker, The Effective Executive (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), chap. 4, “Making Strength Productive,” 72.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Strong people always have strong weaknesses too’?” Last verified 17 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/strong-people-always-have-strong-weaknesses-too/