A country can truly call itself sporting when the majority of its people feel a personal need for sport.
– Pierre de Coubertin
All sports for all people.
– Pierre de Coubertin
All sports must be treated on the basis of equality.
– Pierre de Coubertin
Festival of the impassioned efforts and manifold ambitions of all forms of youthful activity of every generation springing from the threshold of life.
– Pierre de Coubertin
For each individual, sport is a possible source for inner improvement.
– Pierre de Coubertin
For me sport was a religion... with religious sentiment.
– Pierre de Coubertin
Holding an Olympic Games means evoking history.
– Pierre de Coubertin
If he is knocked out of the competition, he encourages his brothers with his words and presence.
– Pierre de Coubertin
In no way can sport be considered a luxury object.
– Pierre de Coubertin
In the Olympic Oath, I ask for only one thing: sporting loyalty.
– Pierre de Coubertin
May joy and good fellowship reign, and in this manner, may the Olympic Torch pursue its way through ages, increasing friendly understanding among nations, for the good of a humanity always more enthusiastic, more courageous and more pure.
– Pierre de Coubertin
Olympism is a doctrine of the fraternity between the body and the soul.
– Pierre de Coubertin
Olympism is not a system - it is a state of mind. This state of mind has emerged from a double cult: that of effort and that of Eurythmy - a taste of excess and a taste of measure combined.
– Pierre de Coubertin
Olympism seeks to create a way of life based on the joy found in effort, the educational value of a good example and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles.
– Pierre de Coubertin
Olympism... exalting and combining in a balanced whole the qualities of body, mind and will.
– Pierre de Coubertin
Racial distinctions should not play a role in sport.
– Pierre de Coubertin
Sport is part of every man and woman's heritage and its absence can never be compensated for.
– Pierre de Coubertin
Sport is the habitual and voluntary cultivation of intensive physical effort.
– Pierre de Coubertin
Sport must be accessible to working class youth.
– Pierre de Coubertin
Sport must be the heritage of all men and of all social classes.
– Pierre de Coubertin
Success comprises in itself the seeds of its own decline and sport is not spared by this law.
– Pierre de Coubertin
The day when a sportsman stops thinking above all else of the happiness in his own effort and the intoxication of the power and physical balance he derives from it, the day when he lets considerations of vanity or interest take over, on this day his ideal will die.
– Pierre de Coubertin
The Games were created for the glorification of the individual champion.
– Pierre de Coubertin
The important thing is that all stages from adolescent to mature man, work is done to spread the sporting spirit.
– Pierre de Coubertin
The Olympic Games are for the world and all nations must be admitted to them.
– Pierre de Coubertin
The Olympic Games are the quadrennial celebration of the springtime of humanity.
– Pierre de Coubertin
The Olympic Movement gives the world an ideal which reckons with the reality of life, and includes a possibility to guide this reality toward the great Olympic Idea.
– Pierre de Coubertin
The Olympic Spirit is neither the property of one race nor of one age.
– Pierre de Coubertin
The six colours, including the white background, represent the colours of all the world's flags... this is a true international emblem.
– Pierre de Coubertin
The strength of Olympism comes to it from that which is simply human, hence worldwide is its essence.
– Pierre de Coubertin
The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well.
– Pierre de Coubertin
Athletes need 'freedom of excess'. That is why we gave them this motto … a motto for people who dare to try to break records.