p.86 If we examine carefully the average desires that we have in daily life, we find that they have at least one important characteristic, i.e., that they are usually means to an end rather than ends in themselves.

p.86 Usually when a conscious desire is analyzed we find that we can go "behind" it, so to speak, to other, more fundamental aims of the individual.

p.87 Man is a wanting animal and rarely reaches a state of complete satisfaction except for a short time. As one desire is satisfied, another one pops up to take its place. When this is satisfied, still another comes into the foreground, etc. It is a characteristic of the human being throughout his whole life that he is practically always desiring something. We are faced then with the necessity for studying the relationships of all the motivations to each other and we are concomitantly faced with the necessity of giving up the motivational units in isolation if we are to achieve the broad understanding that we seek for.

p.88 The appearance, satisfaction, or non-satisfaction of any such motivational unit practically always depends upon the state of satisfaction or dissatisfaction of all other motivations that the total organism may have. It depends for its very appearance on the fact that such and such other prepotent desires have attained states of relative satisfaction. The wanting anything in itself implies already existing satisfactions of other wants.

p.88 the human being is never satisfied except in a relative or one-step-along-the path fashion, and secondly, that wants seem to arrange themselves in some sort of hierarchy of prepotency.

p.88 the probability of any one desire emerging into consciousness depends upon the state of satisfaction or dissatisfaction of other prepotent desires.

p.88 We should give up the attempt once and for all to make atomistic lists of drives. For several different reasons such lists are theoretically unsound... Such listings are foolish also because drives do not range themselves in an arithmetical sum of isolated, discrete members. They arrange themselves rather in a hierarchy of specificity.

p.89 The weight of evidence now available seems to me to indicate that the only sound fundamental basis upon which any classification of motivational life may be constructed is that of the fundamental goals or needs rather than on any listing of drives in the ordinary sense of instigation (the "pulls" rather than the "pushes"). It is only the fundamental goal that remains constant through all the fluctuations and interchangeability of meanings that a dynamic approach forces upon psychological theorizing... The specific goal object is not a good basis for classification for the same reason [it may express many things].

p.90 Sound motivation theory must then take into account the field or situation, but must never become pure situation or field theory... Behavior is determined by several classes of determinants, of which motivation is one and field forces another.