Coubertin Quotes from January

Jan 31

I lift my glass to the Olympic idea, which has traversed the mists of the ages like an all-powerful ray of sunlight and returned to illuminate the threshold of the twentieth century with a dream of joyous hope.

I believe in the moral and the peaceful virtues of sport.

What is Olympic is universal.

O Sport, you are Beauty!

Peace has become a sort of religion, its altars surrounded day after day by an increasing number of faithful.

Games provide the perfect terrain for social education.

Why did I restore the Olympic Games? To ennoble and strengthen sports, to ensure their independence and duration, and thus to enable them to better fulfill the educational role incumbent upon them in the modern world.

Nothing in ancient history had given me more food for thought than Olympia. This dream city, consecrated to a task strictly human and material in form ... (this) factory of life-forces, loomed with its colonnades and porticos unceasingly before my adolescent mind.

From the very beginning, I have held that modern Olympism is big enough to encompass the whole world.

I was quickly convinced that locating the seat of Olympism permanently and exclusively in Greece meant suicide for my work. Therefore, I resolved to fight with all my strength against the obstacles that had sprung up in its path, in the space of just a few days.

Why the Olympic Movement Deserves the Nobel Peace Prize

Olympism is a philosophy of life, exalting and combining in a balanced whole the qualities of body, will and mind.

To awaken in the souls of youth a sense of beauty is to work at the betterment of individual life and the perfection of social life.

O Sport, you are Peace! You promote happy relations between peoples, bringing them together in reverence for strength which is controlled, organized and self-disciplined. Through you, the young of all the world learn to respect one another in generous and friendly rivalry.

If you want to reach a goal, aim past it. One will not accomplish enough unless one strives for too much.

Healthy democracy and peaceful internationalism are elements of moral strength that must guide the renaissance of athletics.

Men hate each other because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don’t know each other; they don’t know each other because they are separated from each other.

Olympism is a way of life based on respect for human dignity.

For every man, woman and child, sport offers an opportunity for self-improvement.

The Olympic idea is the concept of strong physical culture based on the spirit of fair play and the esthetic idea grace.

To ask the people of the world to respect each other is not utopian, but in order to respect each other they must first know each other.

CITIUS, ALTIUS, FORTIUS

The future of civilization rests neither on political nor economic bases. It depends solely on the direction given to education.

Wars break out because nations misunderstand each other. We shall not have peace until the prejudices that now separate the different races are outlived. To attain this end, what better means is there than to bring the youth of all countries periodically together for amicable trials of muscular strength and agility?

Let us export rowers, runners and fencers; there is the free trade of the future, and on the day when it is introduced within the walls of old Europe the cause of peace will have received a new and mighty ally.

There can be no beauty without balance and proportion, and sport is the peerless master of both.

On the playing fields men are no longer political or social friends or enemies, but only fellow players playing the same game.

All forms of sport for everyone. No doubt people will say this is a madly utopian idea. I don’t care. I know it is possible.

The important thing in the Olympic Games is not winning but taking part, just as in life, what counts is not the victory but the struggle.

Olympism tends to bring together in a single beam of light all those moral principles which promote human perfection.

Sport is king!

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