In a long lecture he delivered in Paris on March 6, 1929, Baron Pierre de Coubertin spoke about the enduring spirit of ancient Olympia and the transformative power it had brought into the modern world. He expressed his confidence that the Olympic Movement he had launched would survive long into the future and overcome every attempt to suppress it. 

“Olympia stood for something that lived on after it, which is alive once again, and will continue to be reborn throughout history, alternately raised up and suppressed by our nature which is drawn by balance, a balance that we can achieve but not maintain.”