Top 92 Robert Baden-Powell Quotes
#1. We aim for the practice of Christianity in their everyday life and dealings, and not merely the profession of its theology on Sundays.
Robert Baden-Powell
#2. A Scout is never taken by surprise; he knows exactly what to do when anything unexpected happens.
Robert Baden-Powell
#3. If you make yourself indispensable to your employer, he is not going to part with you in a hurry no matter what it costs him.
Robert Baden-Powell
#4. No one can pass through life, any more than he can pass through a bit of country, without leaving tracks behind, and those tracks may often be helpful to those coming after him in finding their way.
Robert Baden-Powell
#5. 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
#6. The best workers, like the happiest livers, look upon their work as a kind of game: the harder they play the more enjoyable it becomes.
Robert Baden-Powell
#7. Look wide, and even when you think you are looking wide - look wider still.
Robert Baden-Powell
#8. 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
#9. One thing Britons have always been celebrated for, and that is being able to stick it out in a tight place.
Robert Baden-Powell
#10. All Scouts should know about St. George. St. George is the Patron Saint of England; he is also the Patron Saint of cavalry in all countries, and therefore Patron Saint of Scouts.
Robert Baden-Powell
#11. You may be rich, but there is one thing you can't afford - that is, if you are a good sort - you can't afford to spend money on your own luxuries while there are people around you wanting the necessaries of life.
Robert Baden-Powell
#12. I believe that God put us in this jolly world to be happy and enjoy life.
Robert Baden-Powell
#13. If you are in the country, you should notice landmarks - that is, objects which help you to find your way or prevent you getting lost, such as distant hills, church towers, and nearer objects, such as peculiar buildings, trees, gates, rocks, etc.
Robert Baden-Powell
#14. 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
#15. 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
#17. The more responsibility the Scoutmaster gives his patrol leaders, the more they will respond.
Robert Baden-Powell
#18. One aim of the Boy Scouts scheme is to revive amongst us, if possible, some of the rules of the knights of old.
Robert Baden-Powell
#19. Development of outlook naturally begins with a respect for God ... Reverence to God and reverence for one's neighbor and reverence for oneself as a servant of God.
Robert Baden-Powell
#21. Of course, animals have to be killed for food or to prevent their doing injury to others or to property. But such killing is too often carried out without regard to the pain inflicted.
Robert Baden-Powell
#22. To the man who reads 'Scouting for Boys' superficially, there is a disappointing lack of religion in the book. But to him who tries it in practice, the basic religion underlying it soon becomes apparent.
Robert Baden-Powell
#23. True Scouts are the best friends of animals, for from living in the woods and wilds, and practising observation and tracking, they get to know more than other people about the ways and habits of birds and animals, and therefore they understand them and are more in sympathy with them.
Robert Baden-Powell
#24. One of the first duties of a Scout is obedience to authority. He must obey his orders in the first place and put his own amusement or desires in the second.
Robert Baden-Powell
#25. Happiness is within the reach of everyone, rich or poor. Yet comparatively few people are happy. I believe the reason for this is that the majority don't recognize happiness even when it is within their grasp.
Robert Baden-Powell
#26. Football in itself 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 'play the game,' and these are the best of training for any game of life.
Robert Baden-Powell
#27. The knowledge that we have brother scouts working in the same uniform, to the same ends, in the same way, in all corners of the Empire, cannot but make scouts proud of their brotherhood, and cannot fail to bring them into closer sympathy.
Robert Baden-Powell
#28. 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
#30. Happiness doesn't come from being rich, nor merely from being successful in your career, nor by self-indulgence. One step towards happiness is to make yourself healthy and strong while you are a boy so that you can be useful and so you can enjoy life when you are a man.
Robert Baden-Powell
#32. Erudition - that is, reading, writing, and arithmetic - is taught in the schools; but where is the more important quality, character, taught? Nowhere in particular. There is no authorized training for children in character.
Robert Baden-Powell
#33. The most worth-while thing is to try to put happiness into the lives of others.
Robert Baden-Powell
#34. 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
#36. In assisting his 'neighbour' every day to the best of his ability, and keeping truth, honesty, and kindness perpetually before him, the Boy Scout, with as little formality as possible, is pleasing God.
Robert Baden-Powell
#37. Happiness is open to all, since, when you boil it down, it merely consists of contentment with what you have got and doing what you can for other people.
Robert Baden-Powell
#38. Loyalty is a feature in a boy's character that inspires boundless hope.
Robert Baden-Powell
#39. A man who risks his life in shooting big game in order to secure good specimens for natural history collections, or to rid a district of a man-eater or other dangerous neighbor, is a sportsman in the true sense.
Robert Baden-Powell
#40. From the boys' point of view, scouting puts them into fraternity-gangs, which is their natural organisation, whether for games, mischief, or loafing; it gives them a smart dress and equipments; it appeals to their imagination and romance; and it engages them in an active, open-air life.
Robert Baden-Powell
#41. An individual step in character training is to put responsibility on the individual.
Robert Baden-Powell
#42. 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
#43. The secret of getting
successful work out of your trained men lies in one nutshell - in
the clearness of the instructions they receive.
Robert Baden-Powell
#44. "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
#45. If you make listening and observation your occupation you will gain much more than you can by talk.
Robert Baden-Powell
#46. Life would pall if it were all sugar; salt is bitter if taken by itself; but when tasted as part of the dish, it savours the meat. Difficulties are the salt of life.
Robert Baden-Powell
#48. 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
#49. A good boxing competition gives one the sight of fine men in their prime, trained to the ounce, showing the highest skill, pluck and endurance in carrying out their attack and defence under strict rules of fair play and good temper.
Robert Baden-Powell
#50. We never fail when we try to do our duty, we always fail when we neglect to do it.
Robert Baden-Powell
#52. Success in training the boy depends largely on the Scoutmaster's own personal example.
Robert Baden-Powell
#53. Look wide, beyond your immediate surroundings and limits, and you see things in their right proportion. Look above the level of things around you and see a higher aim and possibility to your work.
Robert Baden-Powell
#54. Show me a poorly uniformed troop and I'll show you a poorly uniformed leader.
Robert Baden-Powell
#55. The uniform makes for brotherhood, since when universally adopted it covers up all differences of class and country.
Robert Baden-Powell
#57. Nature study will show you how full of beautiful and wonderful things God has made the world for you to enjoy. Be contented with what you have got and make the best of it. Look on the bright side of things instead of the gloomy one.
Robert Baden-Powell
#58. A boy carries out suggestions more wholeheartedly when he understands their aim.
Robert Baden-Powell
#59. Swimming has its educational value - mental, moral, and physical - in giving you a sense of mastery over an element, and of power of saving life, and in the development of wind and limb.
Robert Baden-Powell
#60. The study of Nature brings into a harmonious whole the questions of the Infinite, the Historic, and the Microscopic as part of the Great Creator's work.
Robert Baden-Powell
#61. If a man cannot make his point to keen boys in ten minutes, he ought to be shot!
Robert Baden-Powell
#62. Juvenile crime is not naturally born in the boy, but is largely due either to the spirit of adventure that is in him, to his own stupidity, or to his lack of discipline, according to the nature of the individual.
Robert Baden-Powell
#63. 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
#64. The spirit is there in every boy; it has to be discovered and brought to light.
Robert Baden-Powell
#65. Giving responsibility is the key to success with boys, especially with the rowdiest and most difficult boys.
Robert Baden-Powell
#66. One of the powerful temptations is that of the cinema palace. The cinema has undoubtedly an enormous attraction for boys, and people are constantly cudgelling their brains how to stop it. But it is one of those things which would be very difficult to stop even if it were altogether desirable.
Robert Baden-Powell
#67. The Scoutmaster who is a hero to his boys holds a powerful lever to their development but at the same time brings a great responsibility on himself. They are quick enough to see the smallest characteristic about him, whether it be a virtue or a vice.
Robert Baden-Powell
#68. Personally, I like reading adventures which really have happened to people, because they show what kind of things might happen to oneself, and they teach one how to 'Be Prepared' to meet them.
Robert Baden-Powell
#70. It is the Patrol System that makes the Troop, and all Scouting for that matter, a real co-operative matter.
Robert Baden-Powell
#71. Young men, of course, don't want to be guided by old back numbers, but at the same time I know that in my own case I gained a lot by studying the characters of the chiefs under whom I served from time to time. Lord Wolseley, for instance, said: "Use your common sense rather than book instructions."
Robert Baden-Powell
#72. 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
#73. 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
#74. Happiness is not mere pleasure not the outcome of wealth. It is the result of active work rather than passive enjoyment of pleasure.
Robert Baden-Powell
#75. 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
#76. Apart from the fact that any hardy exercise conduces much to the training and formation of a soldier, pig-sticking tends to give a man what is called a 'stalker's eye,' but which, par excellence, is the soldier's eye.
Robert Baden-Powell
#77. The patrol system leads each boy to see that he has some individual responsibility for the good of his patrol.
Robert Baden-Powell
#78. It is risky to order a boy not to do something; it immediately opens to him the adventure of doing it.
Robert Baden-Powell
#79. It always seems to me so odd that when a man dies, he takes out with him all the knowledge that he has got in his lifetime whilst sowing his wild oats or winning successes. And he leaves his sons or younger brothers to go through all the work of learning it over again from their own experience.
Robert Baden-Powell
#80. 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
#81. Girls should be brought up to be comrades and helpers, not to be dolls. They should take a real and not a visionary share in the welfare of the nation.
Robert Baden-Powell
#84. Boy Scout is not merely to give you fun and adventure but that, like the backwoodsmen, explorers, and frontiersmen whom you are following, you will be fitting yourself to help your country and to be of service to other people who may be in need of help. That is what the best men are out to do.
Robert Baden-Powell
#85. 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
#86. The most successful detectives owe their success to noticing small signs. Scouts are natural detectives and never let the smallest detail escape them. These small things are called by Scouts 'Sign.'
Robert Baden-Powell
#87. When you want a thing done, 'Don't do it yourself' is a good motto for Scoutmasters.
Robert Baden-Powell
#88. A week of camp life is worth six months of theoretical teaching in the meeting room.
Robert Baden-Powell
#89. The method of instruction in Scouting is that of creating in the boy the desire to learn for himself.
Robert Baden-Powell
#90. The happiest people I know as a nation are the Burmese; their brightness and cheeriness are proverbial. Kindness to animals is one of their greatest 'weaknesses'; no Burmese will kill an animal, even if it is to put it out of pain.
Robert Baden-Powell
#91. 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
#92. Living indoors without fresh air quickly poisons the blood and makes people feel tired and seedy when they don't know why. For myself, I sleep out of doors in winter as well as summer. I only feel tired or seedy when I have been indoors a lot. I only catch cold when I sleep in a room.
Robert Baden-Powell
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