Nov - Coubertin Speaks

Nov 30

Gradually sport has become more international, widening the sphere of action. The revival of the Games became possible, nay I may say, even necessary.

I saw from then on this unforeseen and hidden thing: ‘sports pedagogy;’ there was a whole plan of moral training hidden under the guise of school sports.

I decided suddenly to change my career in the desire to attach my name to a great educational reform.

May the (next) … Games advance the work of … winning over more and more youth around the world and enabling the Olympics to serve the cause of international peace and friendship better and better.

After helping train incomparable soldiers, athleticism also helped sustain their zeal and console them in their suffering.

As for athletics in general, I do not know what its fate will be, but … it presents two new features … (two new) secular transformations: It is democratic and international.

The law of the pendulum applies to everything.

It is possible to draw inspiration from the past without copying it ... In this order of ideals all is yet to be done; but much has been prepared in the path of progress.

Initiative, perseverance, intensity, the search for perfection and a scorn for potential danger. These five ideas are essential and fundamental (to athletics).

When the Olympic Games were restored in Athens ... The halo was placed on the head of Olympism, a sign of the aspirations of its founders and the destiny they sought.

The representatives of the different sports had never, as far as I know, met together for a joint purpose before I invited them to meet ... It was amusing to see how they eyed one another with suspicion.

The time had come to leave … the last visitor went off full of gratitude ... and full of hope for the future of Olympism.

The evolutionary movement toward athletic eclecticism is still in its early stages, but it is coming at a good time …

Among those who have (the sporting instinct), not all reach the limits of what they can achieve. Not all seek out fear in order to overcome it, fatigue to triumph over it, and difficulty to master it.

As Goethe said: ‘Keep firm in the saddle, boys; strike boldly through the mist’ and have no fear. The future is with you.

With success comes risk, and the greater the success, the heavier the consequences.

I wish to see a revival in a … modernized form of the municipal gymnasium of antiquity … where any adult … may practice the simplest forms of exercise ...

The Middle Ages made a gross error in treating the human body as a pile of rags, and in teaching man to despise life.

The revival (of the Olympic Games) was not … a spontaneous dream, but … the logical consequence of the great cosmopolitan tendencies of our times.

“(Olympism) advocates a broad-based athletic education accessible to all … serving as an engine for national life and as a basis for civic life.”

The evolution of the soul … of an institution (must) … remain as steadfast as the principles on which the institution is based.

“Never had a Swedish summer been more glorious … nature was resplendent, the sun perpetually shining ... the general gaiety of the young knew no bounds.”

Above all, Hellenism is the cult of humanity in its present life … make no mistake … it (is) present-day existence that constitutes happiness.

Fortune loves boldness.

Sport calls for an intense spirit of competition and solid camaraderie.

(The 1920 Antwerp Games) have shown the universe, in radiant relief, the educational, moral and social dynamism … (of) modernized Olympism.

The pleasure of the muscles, that source of joy, energy, calm, and purity, must be placed within the grasp of the most humble.

The grandeur and dignity of processions, the impressive splendor of ceremonies, the concurrence of all the arts, popular emotion and generous sentiment, must all collaborate together.

For the adult (who is) over-taxed and exhausted by modern life … sport constitutes an essential counterbalance, an almost infallible means of recovery, a discipline that nothing can replace.

Here in Olympia we stand on the ruins of the first capital of the kingdom of harmony and balance (eurythmy) … not merely in the field of art … (but) in life.

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