The most worth-while thing is to try to put happiness into the lives of others.
-Robert Baden-Powell
Trust should be the basis for all our moral training.
-Robert Baden-Powell
When you want a thing done, ‘Don’t do it yourself’ is a good motto for Scoutmasters.
-Robert Baden-Powell
The more responsibility the Scoutmaster gives his patrol leaders, the more they will respond.
-Robert Baden-Powell
To get a hold on boys you must be their friend.
-Robert Baden-Powell
A boy carries out suggestions more wholeheartedly when he understands their aim.
-Robert Baden-Powell
Be Prepared… the meaning of the motto is that a scout must prepare himself by previous thinking out and practicing how to act on any accident or emergency so that he is never taken by surprise.
-Robert Baden-Powell
A Scout is never taken by surprise; he knows exactly what to do when anything unexpected happens.
-Robert Baden-Powell
Show me a poorly uniformed troop and I’ll show you a poorly uniformed leader.
-Robert Baden-Powell
If you make listening and observation your occupation you will gain much more than you can by talk.
-Robert Baden-Powell
An individual step in character training is to put responsibility on the individual.
-Robert Baden-Powell
Correcting bad habits cannot be done by forbidding or punishment.
-Robert Baden-Powell
A Scout smiles and whistles under all circumstances.
-Robert Baden-Powell
The spirit is there in every boy; it has to be discovered and brought to light.
-Robert Baden-Powell
We never fail when we try to do our duty, we always fail when we neglect to do it.
-Robert Baden-Powell
Success in training the boy depends largely on the Scoutmaster’s own personal example.
-Robert Baden-Powell
The uniform makes for brotherhood, since when universally adopted it covers up all differences of class and country.
-Robert Baden-Powell
The Scoutmaster teaches boys to play the game by doing so himself.
-Robert Baden-Powell
See things from the boy’s point of view.
-Robert Baden-Powell
Possibly the best suggestion in condensed form, as to how to live, was given by my old Headmaster, Dr. Haig Brown, in 1904, when he wrote his Recipe for Old Age. A diet moderate and spare, Freedom from base financial care, Abundant work and little leisure, A love of duty more than pleasure, An even and contented mind In charity with all mankind, Some thoughts too sacred for display In the broad light of common day, A peaceful home, a loving wife, Children, who are a crown of life; These lengthen out the years of man Beyond the Psalmist’s narrow span.
-Robert Baden-Powell
Sunday is a day of rest. Loafing is not rest.
-Robert Baden-Powell
Scouting is not an abstruse or difficult science: rather it is a jolly game if you take it in the right light. In the same time it is educative, and (like Mercy) it is apt to benefit him that giveth as well as him that receives.
-Robert Baden-Powell
“Softly, softly, catchee monkey,” is the West African rendering of a very valuable precept. An awful lot of men fail through lack of patient persistence.
-Robert Baden-Powell
Commemorative stone in the floor of the Chapel of St. George in Westminster Abbey, London, dedicated in 1947: TO THE MEMORY OF ROBERT Baden-Powell CHIEF SCOUT OF THE WORLD 1857-1941 Upon one side of the stone was the badge of the Boy Scouts, the arrow-head to point the true way as it had pointed the way for sailors and navigators from the time of the earliest maps; and on the other the badge of the Girl Guides-the three-leafed clover.
-Robert Baden-Powell
Always do I recall the parting words uttered by my old governor: “My boy, never . . .” I won’t set ’em down. I disregarded them fool-like and paid, and paid; had I a son I’d hand ’em on and ram ’em home. What fools we be when young. We fancy we be wise, forgetting that the old boys have graduated in the ‘varsity of the world, the greatest ‘varsity of all, and each day we should learn from they.
-Robert Baden-Powell
Varied are the ideas of what constitutes “success,” e.g. money, position, power, achievement, honours, and the like. But these are not open to every man-nor do they bring what is real success, namely, happiness.
-Robert Baden-Powell
Football is a grand game for developing a lad physically and also morally, for he learns to play with good temper and unselfishness, to play in his place, and to play the game, and these are the best of training for any game of life.
-Robert Baden-Powell
After forming a cadet corps of boys for assisting as noncombatants during a military campaign in 1900: We then made the discovery that boys, when trusted and relied on, were just as capable and reliable as men.
-Robert Baden-Powell
It is called in our schools ‘beastliness’, and this is about the best name for it… should it become a habit it quickly destroys both health and spirits; he becomes feeble in body and mind, and often ends in a lunatic asylum.
-Robert Baden-Powell
I have often urged my young friends, when faced with an adversary, to “play polo” with him; i.e., not to go at him bald-headed but to ride side by side with him and gradually edge him off your track. Never lose your temper with him. If you are in the right there is no need to, if you are in the wrong you can’t afford to.
-Robert Baden-Powell
Your natural inclination is to preach and to warn other travellers of snags in the path, but isn’t it better to signal to them some of the joys by the way which they might otherwise miss?
-Robert Baden-Powell
The Scoutmaster guides the boy in the spirit of an older brother…. He has simply to be a boy-man, that is: (1) He must have the boy spirit in him: and must be able to place himself in the right plane with his boys as a first step. (2) He must realise the needs, outlooks and desires of the different ages of boy life. (3) He must deal with the individual boy rather than with the mass. (4) He then needs to promote a corporate spirit among his individuals to gain the best results.
-Robert Baden-Powell
“Be Prepared.” “Be prepared for what?” “Why, for any old thing.”
-Robert Baden-Powell
It is the Patrol System that makes the Troop, and all Scouting for that matter, a real co-operative matter.
-Robert Baden-Powell
If a man cannot make his point to keen boys in ten minutes, he ought to be shot!
-Robert Baden-Powell
Make good scouts of yourselves, become good rifle shots so that if it becomes necessary that you defend your families and your country that you can do it.
-Robert Baden-Powell
Loyalty is a feature in a boy’s character that inspires boundless hope.
-Robert Baden-Powell
The first step to this end is to develop peace and goodwill within our borders, by training our youth of both sexes to its practice as their habit of life, so that the jealousies of town against town, class against class and sect against sect no longer exist; and then to extend this good feeling beyond our frontiers towards our neighbours.
-Robert Baden-Powell
As Sir Henry Newbolt sums it up: “The real test of success is whether a life has been a happy one and a happy giving one.”
-Robert Baden-Powell
Mind you, I have had in my sojourn on earth as good a time of it as any man, so I can speak with some knowledge. A writer in the Manchester Guardian who is unknown to me lately described me as “the richest man in the world.” That sounds a pretty big order, but when I come to think it out I believe he is not far wrong. A rich man is not necessarily a man with a whole pot of money but a man who is really happy. And I am that.
-Robert Baden-Powell
A thing that many young fellows don’t seem to realism at first is that success depends on oneself and not on a kindly fate, nor on the interest of powerful friends.
-Robert Baden-Powell
O God, help me to win, but in thy wisdom if thou willest me not to win, then O God, make me a good loser.
-Robert Baden-Powell
I have known lots of millionaires who were not happy men; they had not got all they wanted and therefore had failed to find success in life. A Singalese proverb says: “He who is happy is rich, but it does not follow that he who is rich is happy.” The really rich man is the man who has fewest wants.
-Robert Baden-Powell
The patrol system leads each boy to see that he has some individual responsibility for the good of his patrol.
-Robert Baden-Powell
Yet one more item is needed to complete success, and that is the rendering of service to others in the community. Without this the mere satisfaction of selfish desire does not reach the top notch.
-Robert Baden-Powell
The secret of sound education is to get each pupil to learn for himself, instead of instructing him by driving knowledge into him on a stereotyped system.
-Robert Baden-Powell
In a difficult situation one never-failing guide is to ask yourself: “What would Christ have done?” Then do it-as nearly as you can.
-Robert Baden-Powell
Almost any biography will have its useful suggestions for making life a success, but none better or more unfailing than the biography of Christ.
-Robert Baden-Powell
It is risky to order a boy not to do something; it immediately opens to him the adventure of doing it.
-Robert Baden-Powell
Leave it better than you found it.
-Robert Baden-Powell