Quotes by Pierre Coubertin

• The Games were created for the glorification of the individual champion.
• 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.
• Sport must be the heritage of all men and of all social classes.
• The Olympic Spirit is neither the property of one race nor of one age.
• Swifter, higher, stronger.
• 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.
• The important thing in life is not to triumph but to compete.
• The important thing in life is not victory but combat; it is not to have vanquished but to have fought well.
• The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not winning but taking part; the essential thing in life is not conquering but fighting well.
• The Olympic Games are for the world and all nations must be admitted to them.
• The Olympic Games were created for the exhaltation of the individual athlete.
• Sport must be accessible to working class youth.
• Sport is the habitual and voluntary cultivation of intensive physical effort.
• The Olympic Games are the quadrennial celebration of the springtime of humanity.
• All sports must be treated on the basis of equality.
• Success comprises in itself the seeds of its own decline and sport is not spared by this law.
• Sport is part of every man and woman's heritage and its absence can never be compensated for.
• All sports for all people.
• For each individual, sport is a possible source for inner improvement.
• For me sport was a religion... with religious sentiment.
• Holding an Olympic Games means evoking history.
• In no way can sport be considered a luxury object.
• In the Olympic Oath, I ask for only one thing: sporting loyalty.
• 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.
• Racial distinctions should not play a role in sport.
• 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.
• Olympism... exalting and combining in a balanced whole the qualities of body, mind and will.
• A country can truly call itself sporting when the majority of its people feel a personal need for sport.
• If he is knocked out of the competition, he encourages his brothers with his words and presence.