Success Quote by Maggie Kuhn

Purpose, in Maggie Kuhn's world, is not a self-help slogan; its a survival strategy with political teeth. "There must be a goal at every stage of life! There must be a goal!" reads like a pep talk until you remember who is speaking: the founder of the Gray Panthers, a movement born from her forced retirement at 65. Kuhn isn't merely encouraging personal ambition. She's rejecting a culture that treats older people as a completed story, useful until their labor is extracted, then quietly shelved.

The repetition is the giveaway. It's not elegant; it's insistent, almost impatient, as if she's arguing with an invisible committee of employers, policymakers, and even well-meaning family members who equate aging with decline. The exclamation points signal urgency because the stakes are material: without goals, people lose not just motivation but leverage, community, and a reason to be seen. Kuhn understood that "aimlessness" is often assigned, not chosen, manufactured by ageist institutions that strip options and call it "rest."

Her phrasing also stretches "goal" beyond careerism. Coming from an activist, it implies collective targets: housing rights, health care, intergenerational solidarity, dismantling mandatory retirement. Each life stage demands a new fight, a new project, a new way to matter. The line works because it reframes aging as continued agency rather than managed diminishment. Kuhn isn't romanticizing busyness; she's insisting that dignity requires trajectory. If society wants to write you off, having a goal is how you write back.