Sep - Coubertin Speaks

Sep 30

Sports—there is nothing else with which young athletes can employ their strength … with such moral and physical advantage.

Precocious development is rewarded. This is a general flaw in education these days.... By forcing the flower, you may merely make the leaves drop all the sooner.

The modern tendency to simplify the athlete's attempts to set ever higher, more amazing records … is exactly the opposite of the ancient conception …

The Olympic Movement gives the world an ideal which reckons with the reality of life …

O Sport, pleasure of the Gods, essence of life! In the grey dingle of modern existence … you suddenly appeared like the radiant messenger of a past age …

When they come to meet every four years in these contests, further ennobled by the memories of the past, athletes all over the world will learn to know one another better …

Sport is an unequaled agent for physical and moral health in our time.

The athletic record stands inescapably at the very summit of the sports edifice …

The secret of success does not lie merely in the technical preparation given, but above all in the mental attitude of the athletes, together with the firm moral resolution which inspires them.

(Olympism) refuses to accept the existence of a deluxe education reserved for the wealthy classes, no shred of which should be handed out to the working classes.

Sport—the leveler of class distinctions—is also a powerful alternative to bad instincts, an antidote for alcoholism, a pursuer of tuberculosis.

Behold the spectacle that the ancients have so often contemplated! It rises again before your eyes.

Atlanta, Cleveland and Philadelphia had all three promised the earth.

Faced with a new world … humanity must find all the strength it can in the heritage of the past in order to build its future.

Modern sports has something more, and something less, than ancient sports. It has improved equipment ... What we lack, however, is the philosophical foundation.

The restored Olympic Games have forced all sports to create unforeseen and fruitful contacts. This progress toward such valuable unification is one of the greatest aspects of the work of the Olympics.

The Olympic Games have, of course, exerted no influence (on the world) as yet; but I am profoundly convinced that they will do so.

Anyone who studies the Ancient Games will perceive that their deep significance was due to two principal elements: beauty and reverence.

The time had come to reopen the Olympic era, and through that act to give fruitful sanction to the athletic renewal that was in its infancy.

The sphere of sport contains within itself the germ of a practical philosophy of life.

Cooperation and competition, the two essential elements of any democratic society, rub shoulders in athletic groups.

And you, athletes, remember the flame, lit by the ardent sun, which has come to you from Olympia, to lend its light and its warmth to our era.

Such is the prestige of antiquity … that public opinion immediately supported the (Olympics), even though its scope was astonishingly broad …

Is humanity really aware of everything it owes to the bicycle … the incredible extent of dexterity, balance, self-confidence, physical well-being, (and) muscular strength that this wonderful invention has brought the human race?

Art is not some decoration to be superimposed on a finished object. It is part of the very essence of the individual who feels its impulse.

… at certain historical epochs … physical exercise is called upon … to accomplish a task of renewal, of restoration, of general rigor. We are living in such an epoch.

I believe that, in general, all other things being equal, those who master sport gain a certain clarity of judgment, and somewhat more tenacity in their actions.

The Olympic torch is running from city to city around the world. Its course extends even to the Far East.

This movement is universal and fast moving … we must remember the lessons of antiquity … (to) avoid the pitfalls that the experience of your ancestors has shown us.

No matter how successful any Olympiad may be, one can and one must set one's sights even higher.

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