diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 81c17a56..9b38106d 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -24,6 +24,18 @@ See [the docs](https://docs.rs/rodio/latest/rodio/#alternative-decoder-backends)
 
 Rodio uses `cpal` to send audio to the OS for playback. On Linux `cpal` needs the ALSA development files. These are provided as part of the libasound2-dev package on Debian and Ubuntu distributions and alsa-lib-devel on Fedora.
 
+# Goals
+- Simple API
+    - you should not need to know anything about audio to use rodio
+    - its hard to make mistakes
+    - easy to move rodio parts around your program
+- Optimal
+    - rodio should be a zero cost abstraction
+    - rodio should offer options between perfect and fast
+- extensible
+    - if something is missing in rodio it should be easy to add
+    - you should be able to control rodio parts easily
+
 # Contributing
 
 For information on how to contribute to this project, please see our [Contributing Guide](https://github.com/RustAudio/rodio/CONTRIBUTING.md).