Jun - Coubertin Speaks

Jun 30

The art of the spectacle and the concern for technical perfection have been combined by you, Gentlemen of the Swedish Committee, in the most brilliant and successful way.

(We) will continue our ascent toward the mount where we hope to build the temple, while a great fair will be held on the plain. The temple will endure, and the fair will pass. Fair or temple—sportsmen must make their choice ... let them choose!

Yes! Athletics touches everything—morality, art, social organization. You have not heard the last of its claims … it even touches literature.

Athleticism is based on the principles of the past, which are as true and as noble today as they once were in the gymnasiums of Athens, yet their form is modern.

(Attaining peace) is not a question of causing fighting to disappear, but rather the parade of folly that accompanies modern war.

Athleticism can stir up the noblest as well as the basest of passions. It can foster selflessness and a sense of honor, or a love of gain. It can be chivalrous or corrupt, manly or bestial.

One can train one's will and perseverance just as well as one's muscular capacity.

The Olympic Games may be a potent, if indirect, factor in securing universal peace.

From time to time ideas move around the world, spreading like an epidemic. It is very difficult to credit them all to a single individual.

The dust of Olympia is still what stirs a healthy competitive spirit the most.

When it comes to new ideas, public opinion is like hard soil—drops of water seep into it bit by bit.

The broad horizons available to our age must be shown to each person at the threshold of active life, no matter how fleeting that glimpse may be.

There are three kinds of educators: parents, teachers, and journalists, whom modern civilization has invested with a delicate role, whether they want it or not.

It is clear that the telegraph, railways, the telephone, the passionate research in science, congresses and exhibitions have done more for peace than any treaty or diplomatic convention. Well, I hope that athletics will do even more.

O Sport, you are Honor! The laurels you bestow are worthless unless they have been won in absolute fairness and with perfect unselfishness.

For centuries in its home in Olympia, athleticism remained pure and magnificent … young men, imbued with a sense of moral grandeur, went to the Games in a spirit of almost religious reverence.

(My friends) are many, thank God; so are my enemies. In this world, the one doesn't go without the other. Enmity is the reverse side of friendship; a good cloth needs a lining—it preserves it. The same is true of friendship.

Today, politics is making its way into the heart of every issue. How can we expect athletics, the culture of the muscles, and Olympism itself to be immune?

There is no use denying the evidence. There is plenty of cheating and lying. This is a repercussion of a decline in morality in the world of athletics.

Baron Pierre de Coubertin '… is perhaps the single most influential individual in the history of modern international sport.' —Barbara Keys, Globalizing Sport, Harvard University Press, 2006

One perfects one's skills … by actually making observations. Details that go unseen at first soon draw attention, guiding one’s way of thinking.

(In this) festival of human unity … The effort of the muscles and of the mind, mutual assistance and competition, exalted patriotism and intelligent cosmopolitism, the personal interest of the champion and the self-denial of the team member—all are bundled together in an incomparable synthesis to perform a common human task.

'Civium vires hodie, cras civitatis vis.' The strength your sons acquire today will be the strength of your city tomorrow.

Now sport can do something more for us; if we know how to let it, it will be able tomorrow to safeguard the essential good without which no durable reconstruction will be possible—social peace.

Let peace and progress remain the keynote of the future meetings: because only then the fullest amount of good derivable from the Olympic movement can be enjoyed.

Rowing is the most perfect sport in existence.

For a long time, athletics … was a pastime for the young, wealthy and idle. Our committee has fought harder than anyone to make the pleasures of sport available to all classes.

We must not be surprised if our ideals still lie beyond those of many people, nor if they run counter to the interests of many. Independent and united, we have faith in ourselves.

What is beautiful is noble, not one sport or another in and of itself, but the way in which it is played, the spirit that drives it, the soul that man brings to it.

No nation, no class, no profession is excluded.

Jun 30

Jun 29

Jun 28

Jun 27

Jun 26

Jun 25

Jun 24

Jun 23

Jun 22

Jun 21

Jun 20

Jun 19

Jun 18

Jun 17

Jun 16

Jun 15

Jun 14

Jun 13

Jun 12

Jun 11

Jun 10

Jun 09

Jun 08

Jun 07

Jun 06

Jun 05

Jun 04

Jun 03

Jun 02

Jun 01