As he wrote to his colleagues just after the end of World War I, Baron Pierre de Coubertin was intent on pushing the benefits of sport to the forefront of the public conversation. Since sport was still a relatively new phenomenon in many countries, the Baron was intent on promoting the virtues of athletic activity in every quarter, not only its democratizing advantages, but its physical, psychological, medical uses.  In this quote, he framed sport as a panacea for two of the worst banes the world faced at the time—alcoholism and tuberculosis.  Today’s quote is drawn from the Baron’s “Letter to the Members of the International Olympic Committee,” which he issued in January of 1919.

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