Quotes from Pierre de Coubertin

Sport must be accessible to working class youth.

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

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.

For me sport was a religion... with religious sentiment.

In no way can sport be considered a luxury object.

Sport must be the heritage of all men and of all social classes.

Swifter, higher, stronger.

The important thing is that all stages from adolescent to mature man, work is done to spread the sporting spirit.

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.

Holding an Olympic Games means evoking history.

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.

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

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

In our view the Olympic idea involves a strong physical culture supplemented on the one hand by mobility, what is so aptly called 'fair play', and on the other hand by aesthetics, that is the cultivation of what is beautiful and graceful.

All sports must be treated on the basis of equality.

Festival of the impassioned efforts and manifold ambitions of all forms of youthful activity of every generation springing from the threshold of life.

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