Apr - Coubertin Speaks

Apr 30

Olympism has done more than merely intensify the athletic movement. It has opened up new and fruitful paths for physical education.

We must work on tomorrow, on the next generation that is about to enter the schools.... A whole philosophy of youth must be introduced, one that will form the basis of manly philosophy later on: one does not cheat.

The objectives of (modern Olympic) sports are to defend man and to achieve self-mastery, to master danger, the elements, the animal, life.

Agility consists in properly distributing strength. Balance and combat are instincts.

'Mens fervida in corpore lacertoso:' An ardent mind in a well-trained body. This is the educational perspective of risk-takers.

Honor and selflessness will enable athletics to carry out its task of moral betterment and social peace, as well as physical development.

An Olympic record is a limit reached by a man through the forces of nature … and the energy of his character.

The Olympic Games … are the quadrennial celebration of the human springtime, honoring the successive arrival of human generations.

Today, as in former times, the Olympic Games respond to a natural and healthy inclination of humanity in all countries.

Sport is an excellent prep school for our lives these days, and an excellent peacemaker, too ... It drives away ill will, replacing it with a zest for life.

If someone were to ask for the recipe for 'becoming Olympic,' I would say that the first prerequisite is to be joyful.

Our objective in reviving an institution twenty-five centuries old was that you should become new masters of the religion of sports, as our great ancestors conceived it.

My faith in Hellenism, in its future, and in its continued fruitfulness has grown ever more firm over the past forty years.

Life is simple, because struggle is simple. A good fighter pulls back, but does not give up. He yields, but he never gives in.

I see modern Olympism as having at its core a sort of moral Altis, a sacred Fortress where the competitors in the manly sports par excellence are gathered to pit their strength against each other.

The (Ancient) Greek heritage is so vast … Some viewed training as a form of national defense, others as the search for physical beauty and health through a delicate balance between mind and body.

The Olympic Games must be a glorious sight for those ambitious for laurels.

Sport reduces social distance, at times eliminating it altogether … placing a humble craftsman higher than a prince.

World history has not become easy to assimilate merely because it has become possible to write. The right setting must still be created for it.

The Olympic Games unite the various branches of sport on an equal footing for the improvement of humanity.

As Jules Simon once said, ‘When one climbs up to the mountain tops, one must see joyful humanity ... Let us be joyful!’

There is nothing like the habit of victory to assure success.

The Olympics were established to exalt the individual athlete … whose prowess is necessary to maintain the general competitiveness of all.

Sports stimulate courage. Nothing forges souls more strongly.

The great movement toward athletic unification that Olympism has set in motion continues to progress day by day.

To me, sport is a religion with its own church, dogmas and service, but above all it is a religious feeling … a festival of universal youth, the springtime of mankind.

The pleasure of the muscles, that source of joy, energy, calm, and purity, must also be placed within the grasp of the most humble, in the many forms that the modern world have made possible. That is the integral and democratic Olympism of which we are laying the cornerstone today.

Ambitions? Nothing can be done without them.

The lifeblood of youth, changeless, always energetic, always ready to rise, ardent, joyous … is still striving ... to establish balance in humanity.

In Athens, for the first Olympic Games, I well remember an American lady who, after congratulating me, said, smiling: 'I have already watched Olympic Games.' 'Really!' I said, 'and where was that?' 'In San Francisco.' Seeing my bewilderment, she added: 'They were very beautiful. Caesar was there.'

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