Robert Baden-Powell Quotes
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If you make listening and observation your occupation you will gain much more than you can by talk.
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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."
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Leave this world a little better than you found it.
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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.
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Look wide, and even when you think you are looking wide - look wider still.
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It is the Patrol System that makes the Troop, and all Scouting for that matter, a real co-operative matter.
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The more responsibility the Scoutmaster gives his patrol leaders, the more they will respond.
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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.
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When you want a thing done, 'Don't do it yourself' is a good motto for Scoutmasters.
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"Be Prepared." "Be prepared for what?" "Why, for any old thing."
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A Scout is never taken by surprise; he knows exactly what to do when anything unexpected happens.
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The Scoutmaster teaches boys to play the game by doing so himself.
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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.
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A man carries out suggestions the more wholeheartedly when he understands their aim.
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Success in training the boy depends largely on the Scoutmaster's own personal example.
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A Scout smiles and whistles under all circumstances.
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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.
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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.
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We should take care, in inculcating patriotism into our boys and girls, that is a patriotism above the narrow sentiment which usually stops at one's country, and thus inspires jealousy and enmity in dealing with others... Our patriotism should be of the wider, nobler kind which recognises justice and reasonableness in the claims of others and which lead our country into comradeship with...the other nations of the world.
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The secret of getting successful work out of your trained men lies in one nutshell—in the clearness of the instructions they receive.
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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.
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The patrol system leads each boy to see that he has some individual responsibility for the good of his patrol.
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Trust should be the basis for all our moral training.
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The most worth-while thing is to try to put happiness into the lives of others.