Pierre de Coubertin's Quotes

The Olympic Games are the quadrennial celebration of the springtime of humanity.

The Olympic Games were created for the exhaltation of the individual athlete.

The Olympic Spirit is neither the property of one race nor of one age.

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.

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.

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 important thing in life is not victory but combat; it is not to have vanquished but to have fought well.

The Olympic Games are for the world and all nations must be admitted to them.

All sports for all people.

Sport is part of every man and woman's heritage and its absence can never be compensated for.

Swifter, higher, stronger.

In the Olympic Oath, I ask for only one thing: sporting loyalty.

The important thing in life is not to triumph but to compete.

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.

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.

A country can truly call itself sporting when the majority of its people feel a personal need for sport.

All sports must be treated on the basis of equality.

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.