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.
-- Robert Baden-Powell -
The most worth-while thing is to try to put happiness into the lives of others.
-- Robert Baden-Powell -
The more responsibility the Scoutmaster gives his patrol leaders, the more they will respond.
-- 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 -
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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 smiles and whistles under all circumstances.
-- Robert Baden-Powell -
I have over and over again explained that the purpose of the Boy Scout and Girl Guide Movement is to build men and women as citizens endowed with the three H's namely, Health, Happiness and Helpfulness. The man or woman who succeeds in developing these three attributes has secured the main steps to success this Life.
-- Robert Baden-Powell -
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 -
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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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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Trust should be the basis for all our moral training.
-- 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 -
Loyalty is a feature in a boy's character that inspires boundless hope.
-- Robert Baden-Powell -
An individual step in character training is to put responsibility on the individual.
-- Robert Baden-Powell -
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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 -
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 -
A week of camp life is worth six months of theoretical teaching in the meeting room.
-- Robert Baden-Powell -
The great thing that strikes you on looking back is how quickly you have come-how very brief is the span of life on this earth. The warning that one would give, therefore, is that it is well not to fritter it away on things that don't count in the end; nor on the other hand is it good to take life too seriously as some seem to do. Make it a happy life while you have it. That is where success is possible to every man.
-- Robert Baden-Powell -
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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 -
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 -
See things from the boy's point of view.
-- Robert Baden-Powell -
A Scout is never taken by surprise; he knows exactly what to do when anything unexpected happens.
-- Robert Baden-Powell -
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Show me a poorly uniformed troop and I'll show you a poorly uniformed leader.
-- Robert Baden-Powell -
The uniform makes for brotherhood, since when universally adopted it covers up all differences of class and country.
-- Robert Baden-Powell -
A boy carries out suggestions more wholeheartedly when he understands their aim.
-- 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 -
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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.
-- 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 -
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 -
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 -
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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 -
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 -
Leave it better than you found it.
-- Robert Baden-Powell -
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It is risky to order a boy not to do something; it immediately opens to him the adventure of doing it.
-- Robert Baden-Powell -
Look wide, and even when you think you are looking wide - look wider still.
-- 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 -
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 -
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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 -
Success in training the boy depends largely on the Scoutmaster's own personal example.
-- 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 -
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.
-- Robert Baden-Powell -
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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 -
The Scoutmaster teaches boys to play the game by doing so himself.
-- Robert Baden-Powell -
To get a hold on boys you must be their friend.
-- 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 -
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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 -
"Be Prepared." "Be prepared for what?" "Why, for any old thing."
-- 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 -
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 -
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When you want a thing done, 'Don't do it yourself' is a good motto for Scoutmasters.
-- Robert Baden-Powell -
Correcting bad habits cannot be done by forbidding or punishment.
-- Robert Baden-Powell -
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 -
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 -
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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.
-- Robert Baden-Powell
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